Drawing People

It’s Day One of Liz Steel and Marc Holmes‘ “One Week One Hundred People” challenge. I wrote a post last week with some thoughts on making the challenge possible for yourself. You can read that post here.

But when I looked at my upcoming week on Saturday morning, it looked too busy to carve out a chunk of time every day. So I decided to just do all 100 sketches that day.

One hundred people in a single day either meant drawing all day, non-stop (which wasn’t an option) or simplifying the challenge. So this is what I did” spent an hour and half on Saturday morning at my local cafe, sketching. And sketched through my kid’s concert that evening. Another 1.5 hours. I used no water media, little to no color and really focussed on drawing, not painting.

The idea of using two pens to sketch with came from a chat with Liz Steel. And this sketchbook flip-through video explains the process a bit more.

Getting through 100 sketches in a short time really helped me hone in on what I wanted from the challenge. (Here is what I came up with: I want to draw quickly but get it right. Angles, overlap, and hands are some of the things I focussed on.) I also had to let go of the bits that would have taken too long: color, composition, and trying new media. Here are a few pages from that flip through.

If you were to take up this challenge and do it with very limited time, what would your focus be? How would you simplify the challenge for yourself?

You can find more details about the challenge here. Join this facebook group to share your sketches or just be inspired by all the work that pours in during the week.