Urban Sketch at a Cafe in Ayamonte

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Day Sixty-Nine of Sketching People

Day 69 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Went for a day out to the Spanish town of Ayamonte to sketch people, and ended up sketching a few buildings as well.

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I started my day off by wandering around Ayamonte to familiarise myself with the old town area and see what would inspire me to sit down to sketch. I didn’t want to just head to the first cafe I saw and start sketching people, I wanted to see if I could find a scene or a building to sketch.

Urban Sketching Mercado de Abastos

The first thing that caught my eye was the sign for the municipal market. It was still quite early (or maybe just out of season) and most of the market was deserted, but there was a couple of stalls open and not many customers wandering around. So I started sketching the Fruteria layout in pencil to capture the big shapes, and luckily a customer wandered into frame, and I added her in too. When I was rooting around in my bag for my watercolours, I realised I’d forgotten them – so just as well I brought my new stubbies with me.

After sketching this stall inside I wandered outside and sketched a little bit of the exterior of the market, including signs, aerials, and a canopy. I like sketching these extra little bits that adorn buildings, rather than just the architectural parts. The composition of these two separate elements doesn’t quite work, because the proportions were wrong. I should have sketched each segment a little smaller so I could have created greater separation between them, and leaving a little more white space.

Urban Sketching at the Museum Cafeteria

After my market sketch I figured I’d earned a coffee, and headed into the Museum cafe which was packed to the gills with people. I took a seat at the back of the cafe so I could get a good view of the room. These two gents were at an adjoining table, so were an easy choice for my first sketch in my brand new A6 sketchbook. I added a partial border around them to create a connection between them, in a bid to make it obvious that they were sitting at the same table, because from the sketch, that connection isn’t evident. I also sketched the name of the cafe using the style that was on the menu.

For this group sketch I started with the guy eating his sandwich on the left and then started filling in the crowds of people in the cafe. Nobody was really inspiring me to sketch, until I spotted the old guy hunched over his newspaper. There was just enough room to add him to the far right of the sketch. I decided to colour these two guys in and leave the rest of the figures as ink sketches with tonal shading. Then to help with the visual transition between the two, I added a spot colour to a phone being held by a lady in the middle of the sketch.

I like this strong composition showing the juxtaposition of the guy on the left as a billy-no-mates character surrounded by white space, and the guy on the right being squashed into a corner surrounded by people.

Urban Sketch of Parroquia De La Angustias

I headed towards the church in the middle of old town with plans of sketching the facade, but the surrounding buildings were so close that it was difficult to get a good view of all of it, so instead I focused on some elements in front of the church for my bigger sketch, and added the parasol, chairs, and table from a neighbouring restaurant. I liked the thought-play of congregating at the church and congregating at the restaurant.

For the rest of the page I added a couple of vignettes of elements from the top and the side of the church. They both have a sky blue background, so I coloured the white parasol with the same colour to create some colour harmony between these separate elements.

Urban Sketching Pat & Co Shopfront

The Pat & Co shop front was the epitome of cuteness and I had to sketch it. I sketched out the big shapes and composition in pencil before I added the ink lines, which is just as well. Half way through inking the sketch, the owner came outside, cleared the plants, table and chair away, shut the shutters, and headed out to lunch. But I stayed there and finished my sketch.

Initially I’d included the decorative features about the shop, and the bottom of the railings of the balcony on the next floor, but it was all a bit too complex, and I felt it was a bit distracting, so I erased those lines, and just kept the ghost-lines of the business next door.

Urban Sketching the Statue in the Plaza de Laguna

I wandered around the Plaza de Laguna to find some shop fronts or restaurants I’d be inspired to sketch, but instead settled on the statue in the middle of the square. The tiled benches around the statue were quite close, so the sketching viewpoint was interesting. I liked that the statue was surrounded by palm trees, and the buildings were afterthoughts at the bottom of the page. This vantage point helped to accentuate the idea that this statue plays a heavenly role. I sketched a lot of this with continuous line, and sketched directly in ink rather than messing around with pencil lines.

When I created my collection of watercolour stubbies, I only added one green to the mix – a nice lime green, but I realised that I need to add a couple more darker greens to my travel pencil kit. So when I got home I cut up my Sap Green and Cedar Green (which looks s DS undersea green) – a good combination to add to the urban sketching kit.

Urban Sketching at La Pará Restaurant

There’s a lot of restaurants dotted around the square, and by now it was late afternoon, so I headed to La Pará for a Caprese Salad, which was beautifully presented, and I just had to sketch it. The great thing about ordering a salad, is that it can sit there and be sketched, and you don’t have to worry about your food going cold.

There was only one other occupied table in the restaurant inside and they weren’t much fun to sketch, but while sketching them I noticed that every surface and shelf was occupied by full wine bottles, and I have more fun sketching those than the people. These people’s body postures were too square and static, there doesn’t seem to be any interaction between them. To me, the way I sketched them looks like a staring contest! I really need to be cognisant about this when sketching people. What’s the point of spending time sketching if the poses are boring, because I’m just going to end up with a boring sketch.

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Using Watercolor Pencils for my Urban Sketching Day Out

I used my watercolour pencils with my brush pen all day. They saved the day for sure. When I go out for a quick urban sketch, I’m happy to just use ink lines and tonal shading and finish off the sketches with watercolour at home. But when I’m on an urban sketching day out, I like to pack all the materials I might need. But I forgot my watercolour palette today. I’d filled it up last and left the palette near the dehumidifier to dry out a little – and completely forgot about it. I would have been so disappointed (an uninspired to sketch all day) if I hadn’t packed my watercolour pencils.

I do feel that the watercolour pencils are missing some of the vibrancy of watercolour paint. So when I got home, I added some layers of watercolour paint to some of the sketches to give them a bit of a lift.