Urban sketch in Outpatient Waiting Room

Day One Hundred and Thirteen of Sketching People

Day 113 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Another visit to see the orthopaedic consultant for my post-surgery check up at Faro Hospital.

Urban Sketches in the Waiting Room

Got to outpatients early, and there were a couple of people in close proximity to sketch. Although I think I got busted sketching one of them, and had to pretend like I wasn’t sketching them. Why?

I’ve discovered that how I see people in this world, isn’t always how they view themselves. Now admittedly I like to add a few extra kilos to sketches by making bodily lumps and bumps a little bigger than they actually are. It’s my way of emphasising aspects of a person’s appearance – kind of like creating a body caricature. It’s that freedom to accentuate elements like glasses, hair, clothing, posture, or body shape that makes sketching people, fun and entertaining – for me, but maybe not for them.

The last thing I want to do is to upset a person, or annoy them. So when I sketch, I say a little internal prayer that they don’t catch me and don’t ask to see my sketch of them. I also don’t want to be judged for my rendition of them. And I certainly don’t want to sketch reality and try to depict people as accurately as possible, striving for a precise likeness. I’d much rather sketch quickly and sketch my impression of a person. If they’re hoping for a likeness, that’s what photos are for.

I sketched the man first. He was showing some nervous traits and clasped his papers tightly. When I sketched the lady, who was sitting right next to me, she was chatting with her husband, but was later looking at EKG results, and I wish I’d sketched her hands in such a position that I could have added them in. That way all three of the figures would have something in their hands.

Even though these two people created an interesting V shape composition on the page, I felt the layout would benefit from a third portrait on the page. I was going to sketch another half-body portrait, but she saw me staring and moved to another seat, so I only captured a few lines of her body. And then the Dr called me for my appointment, so I had to stop sketching. But not before I’d added some cross hatching shading on the figure in purple. I don’t usually like this method of adding tonal variances in a sketch, but after doing Dylan’s Eye tutorial in his facial features course, I thought I’d experiment with it a little.

I added watercolour to all of these at home later, and boxed the central figure into a vignette block because she looked odd floating in space between my two seated figures.

I really like how the lady’s purple hat and jacket turned out. I created pools of two blues and a pink on my palette, and let them mix on the page to create a gentle mix of purple shades. Then when it was nearly dry, I added some extra French Ultra Marine in the shadow areas where the cross hatching was. I think I prefer cross hatching on ink sketches, I’m not sure I like that effect when I add colour on top.