Travel Urban Sketching at Lisbon Airport and a scene from my hotel window in Istanbul. Pen and Ink sketches.

Want to loosen up your sketching lines? Here’s some simple tips to help beginning sketchers build this skillset.

August 19th Drawing with Dylan live speed sketching event. Portrait poses ranging from 30 seconds to 6 minutes which I sketched in ink and watercolour.

Speed Sketching Portraits for the Drawing with Dylan live event on August 12th 2025. Portrait poses ranging from 30 seconds to 6 minutes which I sketched in ink and watercolour. Vibrant portraits because I decided to use up the paint puddles from a swatching session earlier in the day. Sometimes it’s good to mess around with expressive colour.

Tonight’s Drawing with Dylan live speed sketching event. Portrait poses ranging from 30 seconds to 6 minutes which I sketched in ink and watercolour.

Putting Perdo Lureiro’s sketching tips into practice on a couple of sketches I did during my trip to London. Loose ink and watercolour sketches of Borough Market and Tower Bridge. Leaving out more than I put in.

This year’s One Week 100 People challenge was great for honing my style and getting me using my Tombow pens for shading instead of watercolour.

So good to break my people-sketching drought. I much prefer capturing people to buildings, and these people were sketched in local restaurants and cafes.

Taking time to sketch visual reminders of our 4 weeks in Turkey. I sketched using a paired down urban sketching kit. And sketched people on ferries, in cafes, on beaches, and some business offices. A real variety of locations and people sketches.

Find out what I learned from Andrey Shmatnik’s Urban Sketching Tutorial on Etchr, and how he sketches different versions of people in the foreground, mid-ground, and background. Including how he stylises his carrot people for more character.

The first 32 people sketches for this year’s One Week 100 People.

Need motivation to sketch people? Join the 2023 One Week 100 People sketching challenge in March.

The Direção Regional de Cultura do Algarve printed a set of our urban sketched postcards of Tavira market, as part of the Mediterranean Diet festival this year. One of my sketches was included.

If you can’t get out and sketch, Sketching People from Travel Photos is a great alternative. Especially when you review your sketches to learn from them. Here’s a selection of sketches from our Cambodian Trip.

The beginning of my 365 Day of Urban Sketching People. Follow along on my journey to master capturing people live.

My sketch of a local wine bar featured in East Algarve Magazine.

Here’s some tips for practicing sketching small and tiny figures to include in your urban sketches to add a sense of scale and context to the scene. Limiting your canvas size helps you to practice reducing the level of detail necessary. I created a list of tips that can be incorporated into your practice sessions, and share some of the challenges I encountered to help you resolve some of the hurdles you may face when sketching these tiny figures.

I joined #tekenuurtje for the first time this week. It’s one of the few Draw This in Your Style challenges that features people.

More people sketches for my one week 100 challenge 2021. I sketched figures on public transport, at cafes and at the local farmer’s market. I also had a go at a bit of reportage.

My Sketcher Spotlight on urban sketcher Suhita Shirodkar, and a review of her figure sketching made simple class. Looking at line of action, drawing verbs, and exaggerating gestures. It’s all about identifying shapes, and making your figures expressive and loose

A collection of people I’ve encountered and sketched during my walks around Culver City in May.

Blind Contour Sketches for my 365 days of portrait and people sketches

The beginning of my Kick in the Creatives 365 day sketching challenge. Where I’m committing to sketching people for a year. In this first batch of sketches I eased myself into this challenge by doing blind contour portraits in pencil, and finished off with some line detail and watercolour. With a lot of accentuated (and comical) teeth.

Here’s two key elements to master when you’re drawing groups of people in an urban sketch.