How to sketch in 5 minutes

Have I mentioned I love sketching people? People are walking, breathing, texting stories, and I love drawing them. The trouble is you never know when they will get up and go. 

So this is how I work when I don’t know how long I’ll have for a capture.  I try to start by atleast thinking of why I want to capture a scene, and what it is about it that interests me. Because that’s the bit I must get down on the page, even in a quick sketch.

This group of high schoolers sat around a table at Starbucks, doing their homework (and occasionally checking their phones) and I was struck by the sense of quiet focus at the table. No chatting, heads down, each looking at their own computer. This is what I captured in the first 5 minutes. You can see the sketch is pretty bare bones and uses just an ink pen and one tone of grey ink that I fill in a waterbrush. I often end up getting no further than this. And that’s okay.

But these kids stayed on at that table and I kept at the sketch. Here’s where it ended up a good 20 minutes later. More layers of ink, and some watersoluble pencil is what I used to get here. A really basic sketchkit.

You can see I quite enjoyed working on the details: See the mouse-ears on this girl’s phone? And the hint of plaid on her shirt?

I also enjoyed building up the play of light and dark  in the different elements of this scene.

It isn’t often that a big group like this stays where it is long enough for me to draw them all, but when it happens, it’s fun.