New Sketching Technique

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm a big fan of the Urban Sketchers organisation. I love the whole idea of encouraging people to draw, to use the world around them as their subject matter, and to share what they see. It's a way of helping people to really see the world around them. When you try to draw something you have to really look at it, and if you do it enough that habit spreads out beyond just your drawing.

I love the sketches of many of the Urban Sketchers, too many to list here, but today I wanted to mention the sketches of one of the London sketchers, Adebanji Alade. He is a professional artist (not all Urban Sketchers are), and his main area of interest is drawing and painting people. Recently he started a blog, Inspired to Sketch with Adebanji Alade which has some fantastic tips and advice on sketching people on location. He's got some great videos showing how to apply these techniques. If you are at all interested in this, do go and have a look.

For years I've been trying to sketch people in coffee shops and other public places and had some okay results, but a lot of so-so ones. Mainly, I think, because I wasn't getting the information down quickly enough. Over the past couple of days I've been giving it a go with Adebanji's advice, and suddenly there's been one of the step changes that I dream about in my work.

Thank you Adebanji.

At Costa Coffee in Shipley

So this was my first try on Wednesday, and I was pleased with the results. The trouble with coffee shops is that people don't tend to stay very long. So the next day I tried the library.

At the Library

At libraries people stay longer, and they don't move much because they are reading.