Day 115 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. An array of sketches on coffee-stained pages using water soluble ink and pencils for tonal shading. Followed by a few speed sketches from the Pencils4Tea zoom session.

Day 113 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A return trip to the hospital, and filling the waiting time with sketches of other people waiting.

Day 112 of sketching people. Drawing is Free speed sketching event on zoom. And completing a sketch study sequence, which was another exercise in speed sketching.

Tips fro Teoh Yi Chie about the different ways he approaches urban sketching groups of people, and what he focuses on when sketching quickly vs. sketching slowly.

Day 109 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. An unfortunate trip to the hospital, but filling the waiting time with sketches.

Getting inspired by the bright colours and vivid backgrounds of Mette Lehmann’s art. Some ideas for creating energy in your sketch by adding loose colour backgrounds.

If you could only take one pen out urban sketching, could you do it? If so, what pen would you use? I considered but discounted my fude collection in favour of the Twisbi Vac700R, and am wondering if she can give me all the line variation I’m looking for. Is she “the one”?

A look at why I’m inspired to sketch the people I sketch, and how I approach choosing the starting point, and focal point of each sketch. What happens when I’m not inspired, and what happens when I leave objects out.

Day 103 and 104 of sketching people. During our trip to Lille I only managed to sketch people at the train station and on our metro ride to a museum housed in an Art Deco swimming pool.

Day 102 of sketching during a day trip to Brugge. Looking at the impact of negative space and how to create a strong sketch of a person using a triangular shape as the key compositional element.

In Ghent for day 101 of sketching people at the flea market and captured a bit of reportage sketching at the cafe, illustrated with a short poem about their dormant cell phones.

In Paris for day 98, 99, and 100 of urban sketching people. Experimenting how to manipulate the line and colour on a page to create a sketch that has a clear visual path and a strong focal point.

Another look at Andrew Tan’s (dreamscape) concepts and approaches for his comic strip style page layouts. This time around we’re looking at his use of limited colour and negative space.

Day 97 of sketching people at Faro Airport while waiting for a delayed flight to Paris. Experimenting with ink lines with spot colour, and adding blocks of colour behind the people sketches.

Thanks to some inspiration from urban sketcher Roger Klaassen, I’ve been evaluating his people sketches where he’s included blocks of colour behind his figures, and then experimenting with this technique of adding blocks of colour to my urban sketches to see how they can be improved by the background method.

A quick people sketch at the cafe, and swatching a muted shade of green, that morphed into a beautiful skin tone shade using natural sienna, cobalt turquoise light, and opera pink. I also ruminate on how I sketch people and how they see themselves, and how those are two very different things when I sketch my version of reality.

Day 95 of sketching people. Today I sketched groups at the monthly Sol de Inverno event in Tavira. I used a different easel today, made out of an A5 watercolour book cover, and it worked really well.

Day 94 of sketching people at a live sketching event at a local art gallery. I faced the dilemma of wanting to add colour to my sketches but having to wait for the page to dry before I could begin another sketch.

Day 93 of urban sketching people at Tavira Plaza. Ink and Tonal Shading sketches on location, and discovered that if I leave the Tombow water soluable ink to “cure”, you can add watercolour on top of it and it doesn’t bleed or spread.

Easter Sunday wandering around Tavira looking for inspiration to sketch people and buildings. But I only managed a few sketches, one of them was the honey man at the craft fair by the river.

Day 91 of urban sketching people at the cafe. Sketched onto a watercolour paper background of coffee stains. I also prepped some page for my next cafe sketching trip, experimenting with different ways to apply the coffee and vary the patterns created.

Day Ninety of sketching people in ink and watercolour. Today I sketched at the cafe, using pages with coffee stains on them. One spread used coffee stain rings, and the other page was messier coffee stain splashes. Both effects are really conducive to sketching loose ink lines and and expressive approach to adding watercolour.

Day 87 of sketching people in ink and watercolour. A quick loose sketch of one of the local boules players, and then a loose application of watercolours.

Day 86 of sketching people. The calm of sketching people at the cafe when you know they’re not going to move much vs. the urgency of sketching people on a bench when you fear they may get up to walk at any minute means you create different line styles. Tight vs. loose.