Urban Sketch of People in Arkasa at the cafe and beach

Day One Hundred and Sixty-One to Sixty-Three of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 161-163 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour, with a collection of people sketches during our time on Karpathos.

Urban Sketching People on Karpathos

While staying in Finiki Beach I sketched a lot more street and boat scenes than people sketches. We were here a week in this little fishing village, which has some of the island’s best seafood restaurants clustered around the tiny harbour, but not much else – an ideal scenario for sketching.

Urban Sketch of People in Finiki

Finiki is really picturesque, and people were always taking photos right in front of the little apartment we were staying, which was right next to a set of steps that crawled gently up a slope between the houses. I lost count the number of times that MOH offered to be the family photographer. Most of the time it was to photograph a small group, but on one occasion he had a group of over 20 family members and he encouraged them away from being photographed in front of the restaurant they’d been eating at, and to cluster on the steps instead. I snapped a few photos of the event myself, and sketched it later that day.

When I’d sketched people in Heraklion I’d started to experiment more with mixing colour with black and white in the same sketch to create a stronger focal point and add depth to the sketch. In this family sketch I did the background steps with some tonal shading, and my foreground subject in full colour, and the mid ground was sketched as silhouettes with a simple ink line.

I’ve done a mix of this trio of sketching styles before, but in this sketch, I used more controlled lines for the foreground and background, and a continuous line for the crowd. I think the use of wobbly lines adds some expressiveness and movement to the crowd of people, which seems really apt. I’m going to have to look out for more opportunities to use the mix of controlled vs. expressive lines in the same sketch.

Urban Sketch of People in Arkasa

Our little village of Finiki didn’t have any shops, supermarkets, or little cafés, so we had to drive 2km to the neighbouring village of Arkasa for all the things we needed during our stay. We discovered a vibrant town square in Arkasa where there was a lovely local supermarket with the Kozi Cafe next door. We made more than a few visits there.

One morning while I was enjoying my coffee and spinach pie, I sketched the people opposite. The street was on the slope of a hill, and I wish I’d fully captured the tables and chairs in their full converted glory, of some legs shorter than the other.

On another visit to the Kozi Cafe I sketched two of the customers and added watercolour. Then we headed to the local beach, where I did more sketching, but left all of those sketches as ink line drawings. The beach sketches were a right wrangle of limbs and body parts overlapping, and it takes a while to disentangle them all. But I think that initial confusion is actually a good way to prolong the interest in a sketch.

My initial tendency would usually be to use some less saturated watercolours for the background figures, but I decided to leave this as it is, and the more I look at it, the more I like it. The main focal point in the man in the hat and stripy shirt, and what I’ve just noticed is that the leg to his left and chair to his right, create a triangular frame to create vertical leading lines. This wasn’t planned, but in futures sketches, thinking about shapes and leading lines is definitely a beneficial step in the planning stage, which would result in a visually stronger sketch.

I also did a quick sketch of these two women having a chat on the beach. The best thing I like about this sketch is the perspective of the sun bed and its frame.

Urban Sketch of People in Pigadia

On our last day on Karpathos we had to head to the busy capital of Pigadia to catch our ferry to Halki. We had time to kill, and spent it in a cafe overlooking the harbour. Next to us were a couple of Dutch ladies who recently arrived, and I did a quick sketch to capture them. I added a watercolour background, but kept the sketch of the ladies as monochromatic, with a spot colour area on each of them.

It’s a scrappy sketch, but enough to trigger a memory of the few hours we spent at the cafe on our last day in Karpathos. I’m realising that my travel sketchbook is fast becoming a smorgasbord of sketching styles, and I’m not obsessed with perfection, the goal is really just to capture a series of memories that remind me of our trip.