urban sketch of people in profile with an observational poem

Day One Hundred and Twenty-Seven of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 127 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Urban sketching while waiting for my appointment at the Faro IMT office.

Urban Sketching People in Faro

I had a 12:15 appointment at a government office here in Faro, but got there about 25 minutes early. I used to hate waiting rooms, but now that I have sketching to keep me company, I’m happiest when I have my sketchbook a pen and a captive audience.

Using Signs to Tell a Story

The waiting room didn’t have an ideal layout – just two long rows of people crammed into a small space. So of course there was an, obligatory, back of the head sketch, but I didn’t just want to sketch the back of heads.

There were a couple of people at a good angle for a bit of a profile view, and when there was an empty seat besides my sketch victim, I was able to do more of a full-body sketch.

I wanted to add a bit of the background information to secure the sketches into the location, but most of it was uninspiring or a criss-cross of angles of furniture and walls, so instead I sketched a couple of the signs on the wall.

One sign was mounted beautifully within a perspex plaque but one of the options was blanked out with a piece of paper, and the other sign was just a bit of paper taped to the wall. Even if you didn’t know this was a government, these signs help to tell that story of a company or organisation on a limited budget requiring make-shift solutions.

Adding Poetic Reportage to my Urban Sketch

For my last sketch I captured two people with a front-facing death stare that ended up sitting either side of me. I was able to surreptitiously capture both of their profiles quickly in ink without them noticing. But I ended up with an odd looking page composition. The blank space between them was screaming out for something, so when I got home to add the watercolour to all of the sketches, I added a short poem as a bit of reportage for my outing to the driving licence office.

Usually I just write directly on my page, and hope the layout turns out ok. But I started a “Love (Your Imperfect) Letters” online course this week in an attempt to stop the poetry I add to sketches, looking less messy and a little more intentional.

So for today’s poem, I wrote it and then laid it out a couple of times in pencil into the space available, so that I ended up with a pleasing shape that looked comfortable in the negative space between these two figures.

I also didn’t write the ink version of the poem as handwriting. I wrote more slowly and intentionally, and thought about each word before I wrote it, rather than going into auto pilot. Even this small change made a difference, and makes text seem less distracting, than the usual hurried handwriting I add to my sketches. This slowing-down, is the first step at getting better about adding poetic reportage to my sketches. It’s simple, but effective.