Bus & square sketches

Yesterday evening I took the bus to meet my girlfriend downtown. Finally I had the chance to do some life sketching.

The first image, and the old man from image two are people I sketched on the bus. I sketched the walking people when I sat down on a bench in Piazza del Carmine, a square of my town.

There I played a little game, called "Sketch a Lady or a Guy in One Minute Catching the Details that Really Define Her or Him". Yep, the name of the game needs some editing, but it was cool and helpful. When drawing, its always useful to ask yourself some question, before messin' around with your pencil: "what shape do I see?", "what is that makes my subject pop out?" and so on. Then you figure out what really defines your subject, and concentrate on those elements.

When I saw the lady you see in picture two, she was kinda posh in her walk, she had an hourglass-like shape, and a huge fur in her jacket hood. So i focused on those elements.

The guy on the left in image three was tall and happy-go-lucky, and so forth. If you want to draw quickly and more efficiently, you have to figure out what you need and need not to put in your work.

I managed to doodle until my butt went ice cold, then I had to stop.

Bear with me

Couple of days ago I was working hard, for many hours. When I noticed that my computer was beginning to smoke I realized it was the moment for a little break, so I powered it down for a while.

Then I took a Xerox paper and started doodling. It came out a bear. I love drawing animals, I'm quite sure I have more beast sketches to post, somewhere.

When the bear sketch was done I took my pastels. Bad idea, Xerox paper cannot handle pastels. Sure enough it ended up a mess. I tried to fix it with Painter, but I should have left just the pencil sketch.

It's raining.

Car sketch - a smaller and quiet version of "bus sketch"

Yesterday evening I was parked with my car, waiting to do some workout at the jim (which incidentally was suicidal).

By the way, at some point this really funny guy walk down the street: he was long, thin, with a peculiar hairdo.

I had my sketchbook (duh), so I took my chance with it.

Bye!

Bus sketch

Today I went to the eye doctor. I'm not going to get blind anytime soon.

I took the bus, 'cause I don't want to poison the world with my car (don't listen to the people sayin' I can't really drive).

Sure enough, I had my sketchbook, so I took the chance to do some real-life sketching of the people on the bus. The lines are a bit shaky, I had to draw when the bus was queued at the traffic light...

Sketchin' around

One thing an illustrator, painter or whatever should do is go out and sketch from real life.

I never do that. I'm bad.

But there's always time to do better, so one day I went out, after work, walked to the park, like a good ol' man, you know, sat on a bench and started drawing.

I must say, it really helps, and I definitely need to practice. Most important, it helps you realize that is full of weird people out there!