Urban Sketch at the Cafe

Day One Hundred and Forty-Three and Forty-Four of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 143 and 144 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. A quick sketch at the cafe with a poem about the draw of a mobile phone, and a scene with two women at a different cafe using a limited colour palette.

Urban Sketch and Poetic Reportage at the Cafe

A quick line drawing at the cafe to capture this innocuous scene of a lady sitting alone and trying to be in the moment and enjoy her surroundings, but she couldn’t resist the draw of reaching for her phone again and again.

I used to be particular about sketching table legs and chairs, but now I’m quite at peace with leaving them out of a scene if they don’t add anything to the story.

In a cafe nook she seeks some peace,
A moment's calm - a sweet release,
But that bright screen with all it's charms,
Keeps pulling her with its pixel arms.

Urban Sketch Scene of Two Ladies at the Cafe using a limited colour palette

I don’t often bother with background elements in my people sketches, but technically, for a sketch to be deemed an urban sketch, it can’t just be a sketch of a person, there has to be a sense of place provided one at least on background element. So today I started sketching some of the background elements after I’d sketched my two ladies.

In actuality, the surrounding area near this cafe is pretty ugly, so I did a pick and choose of different elements to illustrate the scene, which is a lot prettier than the reality of this cafe location. It’s still reality – but it’s my version of reality. Or what they call – artistic licence.

I wanted to incorporate the greens I discovered in my urban sketch the other day, so used the colour triad of  Manganese Blue Hue, Burnt Sienna Light, and Quin Gold. I also used a little bit of some reds and pinks to warm the skin tone up and create a focal point of the phones.

Urban Sketching a Street Scene

On the way back home a street scene caught my eye, and there was a shaded area just opposite, so I took 5 minutes to do a quick line drawing of these apartments with the laundry hanging on the line. (There’s a board game I used to play with my brother when we were kids, called Mousetrap, and this scene reminded me of it.)

It’s a playful scene, with lots of interesting elements to it. I like the use of negative space, and how I was able to segregate an area of the building to sketch, and not get distracted by the surrounding buildings. My intention was to make the laundry on the line the focal point, but because of the colours I chose it merges too much into the background, and the pink sun umbrellas are the focal point instead.

I really should be practicing sketching street scenes a little more often, especially in light of going to Toulouse next week for the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium. I don’t have any desire to sketch large-scale buildings in Toulouse, but I do enjoy sketching small portions or decorative elements of buildings. Hopefully I’ll have an opportunity between now and then to get my eye trained at seeking out street scenes, and not just sketching people on their phones!