urban sketch of people with poetic reportage

Day One Hundred and Twenty-Eight of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 128 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Urban sketching sunburned people at the café with a little bit of poetic reportage to set the mood.

Urban Sketching Sunburned People

I used to be a serious sun worshipper, but as I age, I’m realise how precious my skin is, so I’ve been taking it easy on the tanning stakes, but today at the café there were plenty of people who had no such thoughts.

I sketched these two people at the cafe, and painted coffee-stained backgrounds, and then added watercolour when I was back home. I like the sepia/aged look of adding this coffee-coloured background, I think it works very well as a complimentary background to sunburned bodies.

I also added some poetic reportage to both of these sketches. Some social commentary about the behaviour of tourists that don’t see much of the sun in their home countries. Each to their own.

Are These Portraits an Urban Sketch?

Technically these aren’t urban sketches because there’s no background information in the sketch to ground the scene in a location or tell a story. Both of these are just portrait sketches and don’t tell a story within the sketch, but because I’ve added context with my poetry, I think that nudges them over into the urban sketching world.

Here’s a graphic explaining what constitutes an urban sketch, and why some sketches aren’t technically an urban sketch.

As you can see, a person with no setting is not an urban sketch, but I think that by adding a poem explaining the context and telling a story, I’ve placed this portrait in a setting through words no images.

Well, that’s my point of view, and I’m sticking to it!