Sketching Tips 4: Figures as part of a scene.
I think that a really good urban
sketch can capture a moment in time and tell a story at the same time.
Including figures in your sketches can help turn a scene into a story. I’m not
talking about those sketches where you are just focusing on a figure, or a
couple of figures – that’s something we’ll come to in the fulness of time.
When you include figures in your
sketches you could choose to use:-
* Silhouettes
In this first picture, all bar one of
the figures is a silhouette. I decided to give the other figure a white top for
a little bit of variation. In this sketch the silhouettes give movement and
life to the picture, and also add scale to the building behind it. The building
itself is so lightly shaded that the silhouette figures make a real contrast,
and contrast can help create drama and impact. Silhouettes are a good way of
capturing a figure. Figures move, and they don’t always return to the same
position. It can be really difficult to capture a figure if you don’t have a
technique. Each of these figures was just a very quick outline impression,
where I was more concerned with capturing stance or movement than perfect
anatomical proportions. Each outline was shaded in later.
*
Outlines
In the second picture the figures are
mostly just outlines. These are as quick to sketch as silhouettes, but rather
than shading the whole figure in, I just added a few lines to suggest clothing,
bags etc. Again, there’s contrast between the figures and the statue base,
because the statue base is far more intricate and detailed. The point of these
figures was really just to suggest the crowd around the statue, so total
accuracy, and shading just wasn’t necessary for them.
In this picture the largest and
lightest figures look close to the viewer, while the darker and smaller ones
look further away. You can see that this one combines silhouettes and outline
sketches. I went like the clappers with the couple in the foreground to get
them in outline before they passed by, as I think that they add a real element
of story to it.
*
The ‘monk’ picture
I thought for a while before I
included the monk sketch. The reason why I hesitated is because in this sketch
the monk doesn’t so much add to the story, he IS the story. But I included it
as it’s a good example of techniques I want to talk about. Every now and then
you will just be in the right place at the right time to capture a moment. This
happened with my monk picture above. I was visiting Prague in April of 2017,
and crossing the Charles Bridge at about 9 am this morning I was passed by this
chap. I whipped out my pen and book, and sketched the outline of his figure as
quickly as I could. Whether he was a real monk, or involved in something for
the tourists, I couldn’t tell you. After he’d gone, I sketched the chap with
the hood up on the far right, who was walking towards me. After he’d gone, I
put in the couple between him and the
monk, who just happened to be walking slowly enough for me to do so. So
actually, all of these figures were sketched from life, but they weren’t all
there at the same time. It’s a composite sketch – honest to the scene in as
much they did all walk across the bridge within let’s say 30 minutes of each
other, although this exact scene didn’t quite happen in real life. It’s a
representation of half an hour on the bridge, rather than a caught photographic
moment.
When I felt I’d sketched enough
figures to make a nice composite group, only then did I start sketching the
bridge details around them – I could afford to wait and take my time since
these things weren’t going anywhere in a
hurry. It is deliberate that all of the larger figures, other than the monk,
are walking towards us, while he’s walking away from us – a man walking against
the tides of time, if you like.
As with most other things, I tend to
feel that incorporating figures into your sketches is something you get better
at the more you can practise it. Boiling it down to basics:-
* There are good reason for putting
figures into your sketches. They can add life, movement, drama, and turn a
tableau into a story.
* If you are going to include
figures, then it does have implications for how you make your sketch. Silhouettes
you can put in at any time, after you’ve sketched in buildings, backgrounds
etc. However if you’re going for outline figures, or anything more complicated,
you’re probably better off sketching the figures in first. The buildings and
backgrounds will still be there when you’re ready, the figures probably won’t.
* You have to find a way of working
very quickly with figures, which works for you. I find that whatever type of
figures I’m doing, I always start with an outline. Practise this, and you might
like to even try drawing outline figures without looking at your paper, or
looking away from the figure in front of you. You won’t get perfect figures
this way, but it’s a good practise exercise to help you make quick, fluid
outline sketches. Once you’ve got an outline, you can decide how much detail,
if any, you want to put inside it.
* You’re not trying to create a
perfect, photographic image. You’re not going to be able to quickly sketch in
more than a couple of figures in one go. That’s fine. As figures come and go,
pick and choose which you want to include in your scene, and build it up. The
more you try and do this, the more naturally it will come to you when you start
building up a scene.
