Drawing the figure is one thing, under a time limit is another skill, but, drawing a moving scene is another skill set in itself. I headed out into the city centre to see if I could capture the hustle and bustle of Manchester prime…..to be fair though I turned up on an early Saturday morning so the hustle bustle was reduced to weekend getaways and coffee mornings. Absolutely not a problem for me.
Starting off from Piccadilly train station I made my way down through the centre of town drawing the various street scenes that I came across. Working with a black fine liner it was interesting to try to capture the moving people, taking in their shape, size and posture in a split second before marking it onto the paper.
This was a good exercise because I stared to notice myself focusing on the more important details of the figure such as the posture, orientation of the shoulders and hips, as opposed to the facial features or mood of the person walking.
I did however note down the general atmosphere of the places visited to give me a sense of ambiance to the scenes.
Interestingly was one of the last sketches that I did in town was outside Selfridges, and it was only when I looked back on the drawing that I realised it showed how everyone was ‘social distancing’. I didn’t see it when I was drawing the picture, but looking back over it you can see how all the people are grouped into smaller groups, naturally spread apart. I guess these are the times now!
Drawing on the spot was interesting because of the spontaneity, having to record what you see in a split second made me focus a lot more than I would do drawing from a photograph.
I did some sketches from photographs I took on my travels and I could see the difference between drawing on the spot and drawing from a photo. This was a sketch from Madrid, Spain…
I decided to blur in the text of the atmosphere into the drawing to give a sense of the setting, the sounds, smells, and ambiance to help the viewer feel what I was experiencing while drawing the picture.
Drawing movement outdoors is a great exercise, and something different than drawing indoors or from a reference. I found it helped me focus on the information that was needed to convey the image and not to get bogged down with unneeded details.
Eeyanski Arts 