Urban Sketch of the Honey Man

Day Ninety-Two of Sketching People

Day 92 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Another beautiful sunny day so headed to Tavira for a busy sketching day, but it wasn’t as lucrative a sketch day as I’d hoped.

Urban Sketching Trip to Tavira on Easter Sunday

I packed up an extensive urban sketching kit today and planned to have a productive sketching day. I ended up getting the ferry to the beach thinking it would generate a lot of people-sketching inspiration, but I just wasn’t feeling it. So it was back to dry land, and to the little craft fair by the bridge. There’s a little drinks and ice cream booth nearby, which has a few tables and chairs, and these had a good view of the stall holders.

Closest to me was the honey stall, and so I spent some time sketching the stall and stall holder, and trying to capture customers.

I was planning on sketching a full scene in ink, but people weren’t sticking around for very long. So I sketched one customer in ink who was chatting with the stall holder for quite a while. All other people were sketched in pencil. I like the look of a half-finished sketch, as long as it looks intentional.

In this scene the main characters are the focal point and the pencil figures are just there to give a sense of place.

While I was over on Tavira Island I sat in a cafe for a glass of water, and there was a guy in front of me chilling listening to his tunes and drinking a beer.

And on the ferry back to town, I was sitting next to the lady in the blue shirt. Not very flattering, but definitely full of character.

Really not much to show for my four-hour adventure, but at least I made a bit of an effort!

In addition to these sketches, I also wandered around Tavira looking for interesting street scenes to photograph, to sketch back at the studio. I want to use these photos to practice tonal shading and line weight variances in complex street scene sketches.