Basically I go into a small place, grab a drink and a snack and just sketch the people I see inside. One of my particular favorite places to go is the cafe in my Barnes and Noble. Not only are people there for the Starbucks coffee but many of them will take some reading material they find with them for an extended period of time. That means they're relatively still for someone like me to make a sketch of them.
The important thing to remember (and that I have to sometimes remind myself) is that this is not about getting a "finished" drawing out of the experience. It's more about getting the gesture, the essence of the subject on paper. The things that should be focused on are gesture, balance, posture, proportion. Not detailed and rendered out drawings that are photocopies of the person you're observing.
Here are some of the results from today's cafe sketching. All of the images in this post were done in ordinary pen on a 5.5" x 8.5" size sketchbook.
This woman was the first I did. She had no problem picking her feet up on another chair to enjoy herself. What's nice about poses like this is the it gives you a chance to really observe how the proportion and foreshortening in positions we do not always see in a life drawing session.
What I really like about sketching at Barnes and Noble is that you can see may people at once doing different things from one place. The little boy with the bottle of lemonade was from the opposite end of where I was, the woman against the trash can was near the stairway entrance and the young woman browsing the books from my far right. Of these three I like how the young woman turned out most. Mainly because I was able to add enough of an environment to add some context to what she is doing.
The little boy on the left was by far the fastest on this page, probably not more than 60 to 75 seconds. He was clearly bored with waiting in line with his mom and was stretching around to entertain himself. This was a good practice for me because kids are always moving around often move in ways adults typically don't.
This is actually the same boy from the previous page, only now he was allowed to drink the lemonade (after his mom paid for it) and was clutching it with both arms like it was treasure.
I decided that I should try to let myself use the whole page for a while, especially on a small sketchbook like I was using. This older man was easier to sketch and in a good position for me to see him and clearly see where his weight was on his chair. In poses like this, I feel it is a must to have the chair or any other object (like a table in this case) to add clarity. Imagine how weird it would look without a chair to hold him up in this pose.
Another nice thing about sketching in public places is that you see all different body types to observe (not stare of course). For people like this woman at the counter it was a good opportunity to sketch a person with body volume. Too often I see artists sketching people in what we are taught as the "ideal body" and almost forgetting how to sketch someone of a different body type. Sketching someone like this woman is always a good learning experience. Some of you readers may be asking yourselves, 'ok, so what's the point of all this, what do you get out of it?' That's certainly a fair question and the best answer I have for that comes from Drawn to Life, written by legendary Disney animator, Walt Stanchfield, (his book can be found on this link. http://bit.ly/1aT81cN). In one of his chapters, Stanchfield says,
"Whether your heart is set on the fine arts or on animation, quick sketching is the shortest route to training yourself for capturing those spontaneous gestures and poses that are so essential to good drawing."
That is all for today readers. Thank you for reading and I look forward to sharing more with you in the near future.
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