Airport crowd scene sketched from a photo

Day Seventy-Three of Sketching People

Day 73 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Urban sketching at a the cafe in Cabanas.

Urban Sketching at the Cafe

There’s probably some sketcher’s code that you need to respect your sketching subjects, but in the Urban Sketchers Manifesto there’s a line that encourages us to be truthful to the scenes we witness… so that’s the code I’m living by!

The peace and calm of a Sunday sketch at a local cafe is frequently shattered by the same guy. Nearly every sentence has f**k in it, and he has a very condescending nature – especially towards women. It’s just difficult to listen to.

Usually I’ll just pack up my sketching stuff and head home. But it was a beautiful sunny day today, and I was enjoying sitting in the warmth, so I decided to be a passive aggressive sketcher, stay in my seat, and sketch the truth to record the place and time.

Excuse the language…

… and just to get my own back for shattering my sketching vibe, I added a few extra stone! May the sketching gods forgive me!

As karma would have it, the people at the next table asked to see my sketches before I left. I did consider not showing them, but after flipping through the rest of my sketchbook at my other sketches, they landed on a sketch of swearing man, and nodded their agreement with a wry smile. I felt vindicated!

I don’t want to make a habit of being mean in my sketches. That’s really not who I am. But sometimes … you just gotta go with your gut!

My second sketch at the cafe was a group of Scandinavians having an animated conversation about their recent golf game. Well in my imagination, that’s what they were doing.

Not my finest sketch, but I captured a moment. I think it would have been better if some arms were waving about, and there was more interaction between them. Not a wasted sketch though, because every bad sketch is an opportunity to identify some room for improvement.

Sketching from a Photo

When I got home I wanted to sketch more people, so I decided to get a little bit of airport sketching practice in using continuous lines.

I should have planned it a little better to identify the focal point, but I’d sketched and painted most of it, before I thought about it – because my focus had been on practicing continuous line. So I painted the cases and phones in red to create multiple areas of interest within the sea of denim.