City Sketchers

Saturday, 19th March 2005, page 1 of 3
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

Mike Michael Elisabeth Alan

You've met my Tuesday group, now let me introduce you to a some of my weekenders.

One of the comments I've heard again and again when students have been showing me their sketchbooks is: 'I started drawing this man, but then he moved.' They sometimes add: 'I think he might have noticed that I was drawing him.'

And they've found that figures in a scene, such as the precinct, walk out of sight remarkably quickly.

'People are so inconsiderate!' moans one of my students.

People on a Bench

I have an idea for a half hour's sketching where the figures won't mind being drawn and won't move away in a hurry: on the lower part of the precinct there are pairs of benches set facing each other so we divide the group and half of us sit on one bench, the other half on the bench opposite. A few passers-by stop in surprise when they realise we're all drawing each other.

I like the rhythm of the poses: three of the sketchers have their legs crossed right over left, but, as a variation, there's Michael who has opted for left over right. The spaces and shapes between people are as interesting as the shapes of the figures themselves. It would be very difficult to deliberately set up such an interesting group. It would be so tricky to make it look relaxed and natural.

If you look at individual details like faces and hands, I haven't really sorted them out to get a likeness or to make things anatomically precise. I just did my best to observe each shape as I saw it. The proportions may be a little wobbly here and there but I'm pleased with the overall feel of the group.

'Actually,' says Pauline, another student, who has been sitting next to me, 'I preferred it before you added the colour.'

'Oh, no,' I tell her, 'I like the colour - it adds a lot more information and, to some extent, you can correct and explain the forms as you add the areas of colour.'

I used my Staedtler mars professional 0.7 for the linework.

Sketching Students

Mike wants to get into drawing but he wants some reassurance that he's going about it in the right way. His last drawing today is of an Asian man who sits for his portrait. The man is so pleased with the likeness that he asks Mike if he can keep it. That sounds like pretty good reassurance. Mike also produces a good likeness of me, while I'm sitting on the bench opposite him. I like that pigeon which walked right under the bench. Like a group mascot.

Michael is a restless sketcher and during the two days of the workshop he produces scores of drawings. He's keen on fantasy art and a charcoal drawing he makes of a staircase under construction in the Ridings Centre has a dark, dramatic atmosphere about it. At the moment it's a staircase to nowhere, and Michael's drawing picks up on that as a metaphor.

Elisabeth's fleece-lined jacket and leather boots are fun to draw and I tell her that she reminds me of a Viking maiden. I'm not so far off the mark: she explains that she has Danish parents but she was born and grew up in the Faroe Islands.

Alan has done a lot of painting recently - often in acrylics - and now he wants to focus on his drawing. He tells me of a visit he made to Paris in 1961 which included a night at the Moulin Rouge and a passing glimpse of President De Gaulle, then very heavily guarded because of the bloody events of the Algerian War.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk