How To Sketch People

Okay, next, I'm going to show you the basics of sketching people when you're out and about. Okay, all you really need is a pencil and of course, a rubber for mistakes. I tend to - all artists are different - but I tend to start with the center of the face.

Put a line across for the eyes and the nose, and then I'll mark in the nose and I'll mark in eyebrows. With sketching, you kind of need to keep your eye everywhere, if that makes sense, when you're drawing, when you're sketching. You don't want to draw in detail too much in one area because you might do a beautiful face and then discover you've placed it on the shoulders incorrectly, which would be a bit of a disaster if you did that.

So, keep it quite basic at first, so that's what I'm going to do. I then tend to measure across to get the edge of the ear, the angle. You can use angles as well to get measurements correct, but I use the pencil as well, you can use the pencil as a ruler and run your thumb down it to get a measurement, like that.

So, then, I might start to look at the outside edge of the face. Again, keep it all light because you may be adjusting things - I may very well adjust things as I'm going along today. I'm drawing very, very basic shapes at the moment.

I'm not doing anything in detail; I don't want to commit myself in detail at all. I'm going to measure the width of the mouth. The idea of sketching outside is you have to work fairly quickly because your subject may very well decide to move at any moment.

Unless, of course, they're posing for you, which does help. Again, I'm leaving it pretty basic at the moment. I'm just going to do a block shape for the ear, and I suggest you do that when you're out and about - do think in blocks of shapes.

Then, we need to come up. Now, I can have a look at the top of the head and I'm just going to put a basic shape in at the moment, which may very well change if I feel it's wrong. So, then I'm going to put in a very basic shape for the hairline.

A tutor once said to me, the art of drawing from life is ninety percent looking, and ten percent drawing, and that's absolutely true. You've got to do lots of looking. Okay, now, because you're out and about, you want to get the gesture of the way someone's standing, so you want to do this in a very, very simple way.

Use very, very simple lines. Don't get hit up in details - never do that because what you're trying to do with your eyes is measure everything almost instantaneously. I know it sounds almost impossible, but the only way to do that is to really keep it simple.

You can start putting the detail in once you've mapped everything out. Now, I'm actually working on the arm at the moment, if you're wondering what that shape is, and although I can't see the top of the arm because it's under a sleeve, I'm still drawing it in because I want to make sure I'm getting it right. Okay, he's got one hand tucked beneath - behind the other.

Again, the arm is foreshortened here, so don't think of it as an arm. Don't think of it as an arm, think of it as a shape. There's a funny shape like this that so happens to be the arm, and same here for the other.

I mean, it doesn't even look like an arm, does it? It's just a shape because you've got the foreshortening. So, don't even think in terms of drawing the arm now. The minute you do that, you'll freeze up and you'll start having problems.

Okay, well, I'm going to put the sleeve in now because he's wearing a short-sleeved shirt, my imaginary boy. And obviously, this is very crude, it's quite rough, but that's what a sketch is all about, a sketch is capturing a moment so that you can go home and - I'm going to bring that down a bit - you can go home and refine it even more, once you're home. You don't - you want to capture that moment, you don't want to lose it.

And that's what we're trying to achieve here in sketching. Right now, we need to add a bit more detailing to the face because o