Let’s look at some of the urban sketching tutorials I did this month to improve my people sketching skills. As part in a Kick in the Creatives #Kick365 art challenge I’m spending the next year Urban Sketching People, occasionally I can’t get out and about to sketch people live, so when that happens I make sure to hop on over to YouTube to do people sketching tutorials from fellow Urban Sketchers.
Historically people have been the primary focal point in my urban sketches, but I wanted to use this year-long challenge to explore the different ways to depict people in a scene. So this month I have been focusing my tutorial searches on how to sketch small figures with minimal details. With a focus on believability rather than realism.
Toby Urban Sketch – People in a Scene 4 Simple Tips
This tutorial focused on creating simple figures with minimal detail that help to provide context and perspective in a scene, without becoming the primary focus.
Here’s some techniques I experimented with:
- Approach people as simple shapes
- Lose lines (don’t have to connect all lines within the figures)
- Leaving a blank face or add just a suggestion of features
- Use a lighter pen (shade or weight) for your figures than you do for the surrounding buildings
- Add shadows to ground the figures
- Add hatching or tonal shading for contrast instead of using colour, to add depth without distraction
If you have 15 minutes to spare, check out Toby’s YouTube tutorial:
Short videos like this one above is ideal when you need a creative fix but don’t have a lot of time. In just 15 minutes I picked up some valuable tips for improving my urban sketching.
If you’ve done a YT tutorial you think I’d enjoy, please add a link to the comments section below so I can give it a watch.
