Urban Sketch of People lining up to eat lunch
Day Ninety-Eight, Ninety-Nine, and One Hundred of Sketching People
Day 98, 99, 100 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. We went to Paris to attend a Dub Inc. concert. We spent four days sightseeing the city, and I managed to squeeze in a little bit of people sketching.
I sketch a lot of people, and on this trip I wanted to experiment with different page layouts and composition ideas. I also wanted to investigate how to define the focal points on my page using colour or ink lines.
Ink and Spot-Colour Urban Sketches
I wanted to use my travel sketching adventure as an opportunity to experiment with different styles of ink and wash sketching and trying different layouts.
I really like sketching with a fountain pen, and wish I could do more ink-only sketches, but the desire to add colour is just too strong. But for these two sketches I did ink-only for the people sketches, and added spot colour for other elements within the sketch.
This first sketch was done in a cafe mid-afternoon, and I used a limited palette to add some focal points like the menu’s, and the wall and potted plant to convey the location and give a sense of place. I’m exploring how to use this square format sketchbook that is the only sketchbook I brought in my urban sketching kit. I’m not used to it yet and am unsure of how to plan the layouts.
I overlapped the couples to give a sense of connection between them and this is bolstered by the colour palette I used. I also added a border around one of the couples, which creates a sense of separation in this composition. Don’t love it. Don’t hate it. The jury is out.
Earlier in the day we were sitting at a different Parisian corner, lingering over a coffee, and I had a good view of a cake shop opposite. I loved the green and gold shop front, and just focused on sketching some of the elements. I’m counting this as a people sketch – because of the walk/don’t walk pedestrian lights.
There was busy brasserie on the other corner, . There was a wait for tables at the brasserie, so I had time to sketch the people lining up outside. I didn’t want to sketch the whole restaurant frontage because it would have competed too much with the sketch of the figures, so just settled for sketching the door and entrance way. I used some of the left over green paint from my shop front as these two sketches were on a double page spread in my sketchbook.
This colour coordination between pages helps to create a sense of flow in a sketchbook. I was inspired by urban sketcher Oliver Hoeller. In his Pack your Sketches Full of Life he explained how he often chooses a different limited colour palette for a specific location, so that the entire sketchbook from his trip has that sense of cohesion.
Ink Line Focal Point Urban Sketch
I sketched this scene as was going to add watercolour to it all, but decided to leave the focal point guy on the computer as an ink line drawing, but colour everyone else. I kept the colour palette of these supporting people to Natural Sienna, Burnt Sienna, and FUM, so that they all blended into the background and coordinated with the counter top.
I think it would have been good to add a splash of saturated colour on the computer or the computer keys to create an initial visual focal point. Then the visual journey would lead up the arm to the main focal point character, before continuing clockwise around the other people in the scene.
Urban Sketches with Vignettes
The square format of my sketchbook is an ideal shape for creating a page layout with one full-length sketch, and some vignettes or titles and text.
I sketched this woman first, and then created a couple of vignettes on the other half of the page. I wanted to create some cohesiveness between these three disparate figures, so used yellow and grey to connect all three. I limited the rest of the colour palette to primary colours, and like how those two strategies creates a harmonious feel to this page. Because of the size of the vignettes and the warmth of the yellow, it feels like together, the vignettes create as strong a focal point as the lady with the red trousers and phone. It just feels visually balanced.
I sketched the seated guy first and then added a single vignette. I used saturated colours in the vignette and didn’t colour the border, and this helps it to recede leaving the seated man as the focal point because of the darker contrast of his jeans and shirt.
I used the orange colour of the drinks, seat, vignette background and location text to create a circular visual journey around the page.
Urban Sketch Portraits in a Grid
I sketched out this grid layout prior to my trip, with the idea of sketching iconic portraits that I encountered in Paris. But iconic looking people in Paris were few and far between – or more likely, they weren’t frequently the same cafes we were.
I made the backgrounds too bright and distracting (using Tombow dual brush pens). These would have worked better in a monochromatic shade. But I like the idea of creating some predefined sketching areas in my book to fill, rather than a blank page.
Line and colour both create a strong presence on a page, and it’s interesting to see how to manipulate the line and colour on a page to create a sketch that has a clear visual path.
