Exercise 3.2: Working With External Visual Impetus – People

This exercise quite succinctly summed up its goal: The aim of this section is to introduce you to observing figures. This was achieved in two parts – first, I was asked to draw someone I see on a regular basis, then I was asked to go into a crowd and attempt to sketch strangers.

Historically I have hated drawing people, especially from memory or imagination – however, I love to do so in a life-drawing context. Rapid sketches of posed models is a warm-up exercise I turn to quite regularly, and I find it relaxing and enjoyable to draw detailed individual body parts or items of clothing. I especially love to draw hair and hands. When it comes to piecing together the whole body, putting some clothes onto it, and creating a person, I seem to crumble. I feel unable to do it and often avoid this where possible. I expected that, because of this, I would end up hating this exercise and feeling it was monotonous and depressing, but surprisingly I wish I didn’t have to stop.

As I live alone and don’t get out of the house much, I waited for my friend to visit me for my birthday. She very kindly offered to let me sketch her in all sorts of contexts and consented for me to post the work on my learning log. The exercise said to draw the person doing what they do every day and gave examples such as when they’re using the computer, reading a book, washing their hair, or eating their dinner. I was asked to do some quick drawings and at least one longer sketch and focus on varying body parts throughout the exercise. I decided to use a coloured pencil for this as I thought I would enjoy looking at the sketches more than if I used my usual pens.

Compared to the latter two, my first page of sketches clearly shows I lacked confidence when I began. I didn’t really know where to start, what to draw, or how to ensure I did it fast enough before my friend moved on to doing something else. By the final page, I felt a lot more certain in my choices and in that it didn’t really matter how the sketch looked or whether it was true to life or not. I feel like it’s hard to draw someone you know as there’s a subconscious fear that you may offend the person. Once I got over this, I really had fun! I also noticed that my drawings became larger in size over the course of the exercise. I think this also shows confidence and demonstrates how I settled into what I was doing. Looking back at these drawings excites me and makes me want to do more like this!

For the second part of the exercise, I had to find a way to put myself ‘in a crowd’ without literally going into a crowd. I started by using this website to view a live CCTV camera in Linlithgow, Scotland. The camera points directly at the centre of the town towards the end of the high street, so it was pretty populated. Frustratingly, the camera moves around a lot and changes viewpoints every 10 seconds or so, but this actually ended up forcing me to draw quicker and focus on capturing the general shapes of people. Then, I watched about half of this video on YouTube filmed from a cafe in Cluj, Romania. This was fantastic as it felt just like I was there in person! Though again, people were generally walking past very quickly, and the stationary viewing point of the video meant I only had brief glimpses to sketch from.

Out of the two, I much preferred sketching from the CCTV footage. I’m not entirely sure why, but I kept wanting to go back to it once I’d moved on to the YouTube video. I also really like the page of sketches I produced during that part of the exercise, whereas only one or two from the YouTube video stand out to me.

I chose to change my drawing tool to a simple ink pen for this part of the exercise, as I can get more precise detail with it, and it feels better to use when drawing very rapidly. There were cons to this, though, as the ink took a while to dry. I kept smudging my work and found waiting between sketches would kill my flow.

While sketching my friend, I started to develop an eye for certain features or objects that I wanted specifically to capture – the way her hands were posed, how her hair was sitting, how her clothes hung off her legs, etc. This was honed further when I began drawing ‘in public’. I would notice a hat, a pair of glasses, the way a bag was slung over a shoulder, and that would be what inspired me to draw the person in question. It was beneficial that this was what was driving me, as it enabled me to make quick choices in the content I drew before the person walked off-screen. 

This skill is one I’d like to continue developing. For example, I am noticing I catch more that I want to sketch when watching TV shows or YouTube videos. I’d like to get to a point where I regularly pick up my sketchbook and draw from these cues. I think it would be especially useful when considering narrative and character development – I would essentially be developing a book full of interesting objects, items of clothing, and bodies. There’s clearly something drawing me to those things, and it would be wonderful to be able to reference this and utilise it. 

Overall this exercise was a really enjoyable one, and it was nice to just get lost in sketching again. I feel I’ve learned some really valuable skills that will help me going forwards, too.