One Week 100 People 2020

Marc Taro Holmes and Liz Steel's #Oneweek100people project came around much faster than I was expecting - I'm sure it's not a year since the last one!? But I always enjoy this challenge, in spite of a great feeling of laziness and denial beforehand. Once out, I love the people watching, trying to capture the variety of shapes, styles and characters, and usually notice an improvement during the week. I started almost by accident last Sunday when I had been standing in a long, long grocery queue for a good 10 minutes before I realised it was a great sketching opportunity. Of course as soon as I started doing that, the queue started moving along really fast.

It was a real effort to get out of the house and seek people the next day. First I sat at my steering wheel and sketched people moving around in car parks - mostly going far too quickly for proper observation. 

I've been asked how I sketch moving people so fast, and of course they're very often out of sight before I finish. I can draw basic figures, in about any position, from memory - after many hours of figuring it out, and staring without always trying to sketch (if the left foot is forward, which arm is swinging to the front?...if I've drawn that leg there, how would the other leg make sense, at what angle/where is the weight? etc.etc.) and practicing, and trial and error. Observing the live subjects provides details like body shapes and postures, hair and clothes styles, defining features, and I'm often craning my neck to see my subject's particular standout shoes or headwear, or whatever captured my attention in the first place as they disappear into the crowd or distance. 

I then decided to find more stationary subjects, and found a table at a café with a good view of the other customers. People on phones are pretty much oblivious to anyone staring at them, I find, but had to peer surreptitiously at others through sunglasses. 

It's ironic that the week I ventured out of a long semi-hibernation is the week Covid-19 arrived in this country. I certainly noticed very thorough and regular cleaning of surfaces by restaurant staff at the two I visited, but were still bustling with customers. I'm sure that will drop off drastically this week after the president's announcement of a state of disaster last night, and infection numbers double every other day. Please take care and stay safe everyone.

Another outside table at the Zone in Rosebank, some people staying put for a few moments on what is apparently Smoker's Bench right in front of me - others approaching from or departing into the distance, giving me a little time to catch some details.

And my last day, at Emmarentia Dam's dog park, where people seemed to arrive in batches. I had to include some of the dogs, so much fun to watch (and yes, I did get dam water shook all over me and my sketchbook!) but I ended up with some strangely rendered specimens! I counted 95 attempts at people - the most I've got to doing this challenge over the years, only five escaped!

End of the Dinner Party

 I've just come to the end of this year's Greg Kerr (website currently under construction) painting course, "The Dinner Party", which once again has been a fascinating, informative and unpredictable ride through the world of painting, art and artists, as well as really fun, sociable interludes throughout the year.

It started with researching and making Valentine cards for 5 artists, plus yourself, as preparation for the course. During the first week we painted place settings for each one in acrylic, glazed and embellished later if needed in oils. As prep for the following session we had to make and photograph clay models of the artists at a dinner table, in a setting, which we drew up carefully and painted in class onto one canvas and freely painted onto a second, using oil glazing methods.

In September, we were introduced to a process called Decalcomania, where we covered our place-setting paintings with plastic, repainted the images thickly in primary and secondary colours in acrylic, and then quickly transferred to a new canvas of the same size, repeated as many times as was necessary for a rich textured surface. This process produced unexpected and random results; blobs, blotches, textures, misregisterings, all of which were part of the grand plan.

On these printed images we were to cool down and warm up chosen areas (Mavis and Fred in Greg's unique terminology!) to make them recede or come forward, and then go through a list of possible interventions to challenge us, develop a dialogue with the work, and create an interesting patina and history - including more decalcomania, patterning, glazing, shadows, wet-in-wet and dry brush painting.

The entire project has upended my 'normal' way of doing things - which I welcome wholeheartedly, bored as I often get with my faithful renderings of things and people - but challenging and perplexing it certainly is...and am still busy with, so no final results to show you as yet, but here are some pictures of the process so far.

Nia Dancing

While I'm not quite ready for any of the extreme activity I tried to portray in these sketches, I'm at least able to look at them again without wincing. Thank you for all the well wishes here and elsewhere, I appreciate them all so much and am recuperating steadily!

This was a Nia dancing 'jam' held at moyo restaurant at Zoo Lake on the first day of Spring last month. Barbara, Anni and I went along for some more action sketching. All and sundry were invited to join this stretching, energising class after the torpor of winter and we on the sidelines were tempted to discard our sketchbooks and join in, it looked so much fun. It was fun to sketch too, once we'd (well, I) got over stage fright - we were welcomed to come in, watch and sketch and the dancers seemed to appreciate us appreciating their agile creativity.

I've been asked again for tips on drawing moving figures so I've tried to analyse what I did here. It does differ with the amount and pace of movement - this was very fast in comparison to the Tango lesson of two posts ago, where the same actions were repeated over fairly slowly so I had more time to study the shapes of arms, legs, backs etc.

• Remember, none of these are definitive captures of a single pose or body position, as in a snapshot. They are the results of watching the movements of a group, scribbling down fleeting impressions of, for instance, outstretched arms, then watching some more and adding a torso, fitting it to what's been put down, looking again to catch a leg position - perhaps from your original subject, perhaps from somebody else who has moved into your field of vision - attaching as logically as possible to what's happening in the rest of the figure.

• Clothing, hair, head gear or scarves can help to create the impression of movement, flowing wavy lines or creases across a torso describing a sideways stretch or a swooping lunge.

• Try and relax into the movement of  your pen or brush - this may only happen deep into your sketching session - allow it to dance lightly around your page. I sometimes find myself 'conducting' the music in the air with my brush before lowering it to the page and constraining it into body shapes while keeping some of the swirling, twirling motion of my baton.

• Feel within your body the music, the rhythm, the big shapes of the dancer's bodies as well as the smaller ones of hands and feet - see this sketch with arms stretching upwards - by no means accurately drawn hands, but imitating the many fingers flickering together in the air. If you look at some of the individual limbs, hands and feet I've sketched, there are some weird shapes and renditions, but as a whole, give the impression of movement, stretches, lunges, etc.

• To analyse and store in your 'memory bank' some of the postures bodies can get into during sport or exercise, try pausing your TV during a programme like 'So You Think You Can Dance' (a favourite of mine!) and sketch what you see, you'll be surprised at the odd shapes limbs can get into in the middle of a pas de deux!

Does all of that make sense?... probably not, but I hope it helps somebody, somewhere, somewhat! Do let me know if so.

...Aaa..a..nd rest!!

How to Sketch Crowds

This post is in response to a couple of comments, asking that I reveal all on How to Sketch Crowds. It's been a novel and slightly daunting experience trying to formulate what has come about through years of trial and error, and the good old 3 P's - practice, practice, practice - in my case both voluntary and imposed (when I was required to draw anything, fast, on demand as a junior 'renderer' in the ad industry way back when...)
Katherine Tyrrell has also done comprehensive posts on drawing people and people while eating - forgive me if I repeat some of what she's said - it probably means that's a pretty good point to remember!

First I'll presume that you're very familiar with drawing single figures and faces before you get to the crowds... lots of life-drawing, your family or friends in front of the TV, etc. Figures and faces from the side, front, top, three-quarter, back, sitting, slouching, smiling, frowning... Observation is a lifelong exercise that never ends - I'll stare at someone's foot, taking mental notes of how it looks from the front, or how a mouth curves when facing up and laughing... it's why I sometimes don't hear what you're saying to me, but also why I think I've got better at drawing over the years!

OK. Crowds. I start with one figure - generally around the centre foreground. I might start with sketchy pencil lines like this --> to vaguely place the figures, especially if there's perspective involved, but not always. I've numbered them more or less as I'd start and finish. If there are structure/s around which people are arranged, like chairs, tables, pillars, indicate them to give you a point of reference for size and position. Not too much detail on those - you can add that later if you want to.

With these at the licensing department I sketched in pencil and added pen and watercolour afterwards at home, but keeping, as much as I could, the spontaneous feel - I wished soon after I started, that I had gone straight in with pen, but it was one of my first attempts at a crowded room, so I was a bit wary. And I didn't know I would have so much time to draw!I don't worry about getting the right people in the right places - who would know? - in this situation, every ten to fifteen minutes the queue of people got up and shifted 5 or 6 seats along, so the next person I drew would be relative to the first, but wasn't necessarily the person that was sitting next to them at the time.
I drew the head and shoulders of this guy (1), and the line got up and moved, so I left his lower half until a suitable body came along to complete the figure. The owner of the hands filling in his forms (2) actually had his head (with long, floppy hair if I remember correctly) bent right over them, but added onto my original head, they're just paused in their writing task.
A note on hands - don't stress over them, if they're the right size and vague shape, they'll register as 'hands' - don't get into counting fingers as I used to do!
I'll continue with figures to the left and right of my first one, front to back - I like to do two or three character sketches, just because I enjoy people's faces, especially if there are interesting expressions, hats (3), hairdo's (4) and so on. Then I fill in the gaps between the main players...whatever can provide some interest to a sea of heads and shoulders, I look out for and put in. A hand gesture to the face (5) a yawn, a stretch - anything to add mood or liveliness to a scene.

In this Food Court sketch I think I started with the girl with the ponytail, as she was a 'safe' distance away not to notice. The woman on the right arrived and smiled and laughed continuously the whole time she was there, but by the time I got to her daughter, I think it was that she was talking to, they were moving off, so she's smiling and chatting to a total
stranger who sat down there next, and gulped his food so fast I only just got him down in time!

In this sketch of a moving, singing, dancing choir, I started with the central figure of the choir-leader - I went straight in with my fine pen (0.2 unipin) - don't worry if lines overlap or if you do some 'wrong' lines - it all adds to the impression of movement and action, and might help in developing your own special signature style. I picked out just one figure that I had a good view of and sketched them doing whatever it was at the time - the one to the right of the conductor dancing, the next clapping, then to the gaps in between, going back row by row and filling in - again, nobody will know or care if you left somebody out or put someone in a different place, as long as they are more or less in proportion to each other.

As for colour - I mostly add it later at home, unless I have unlimited time and space, don't mind who's watching and have all my equipment to hand, which isn't often - in fact it's usually from the shelter of my car that I occasionally paint people on the spot. Sometimes I'll pencil in colour notes to remind me, as in the second pencil sketch - sometimes one or two striking colours serve to highlight a figure or group. With the choir, they were all in black but I used blue to enliven the darks, and their spotted scarves to further convey their energy and sparkle.

I hope you find this helpful, Linda, and any other interested parties - it was Cathy of Cards and Stuff who commented "I'm amazed at how many people you can sketch !! And the sketches seem to have been done calmly... Are people sitting nicely still for you to sketch them or what? ;-) What's your magic trick?" No, I'm definitely not always calm Cathy, and they don't sit still, but hopefully this explains some of my process, which undergoes reviews constantly, so check back!