from bleached bones

Asked by Anonymous

Do you mean like in these ballpoint sketches? Or these ink wash ones? Or these digital warm up ones?

I’ve found that whatever medium you use for sketching usually dictates how caught up you get in the details. So, for example it’s easy for me to get sucked up into linework with the ballpoint pen, while when I’m doing ink wash stuff, I can lay in big swaths of value. One answer is if you find yourself getting too caught up in little details, simply switch to a larger brush/pen/stylus whatever. 

The correct answer, however, is to switch up how you’re thinking about sketching. When you’re sketching from observation and you have limited time, remember that you’re trying to capture the overall suggestion of a thing, not render completely as if you had a camera behind your eyes. Remember the old Cezanne maxim: “I have not tried to reproduce nature, I have represented it.” 

So generally that means you have to be kind of smart to capture a scene efficiently and quickly. One illustration truism stands above all others here: larger statements are more effective than smaller ones. 

So whether that means you simplify and group values, and consolidate your objects into larger shapes…

…or distill poses and gestures down to a few simple lines, either on the outside contours or within a figure’s main path of action, always try to pare down what you’re seeing and translate that into the most efficient expression.

I’m a firm believer in taking a second or two to process what you’re actually seeing in a scene before sketching it. Pay attention to the nature and quality of light, as well as the emotions and gestures of the people you’re drawing. These will dictate your drawing decisions.

For more examples by artists who do it way better than me, see James Gurney and James Jean. 

Asked by Anonymous

Thanks! There’s a couple of ways you can go about it: 

Be super stealthy: prop up your sketchbook so that it’s only visible to you, keep it at eye level, and only glance up really fast. When you make inevitable, awkward eye contact with your subject, quickly look away as if you were just checking out that super interesting subway map behind them.

-or- 

Just totally rock it. Show them your drawing if they inquire, tell them that you’re an artist/illustrator/whatever, and talk about why it’s important for artists to go sketching all the time. Show them the rest of their sketchbook, and explain to them how you’re going about drawing.

I find that the more public the situation, the more gregarious you can be. If it’s a quiet little coffee shop or something, then obviously you need to be more discreet. 

At the end of the day drawing in public isn’t really that weird and is generally socially acceptable (generally). You’re also doing it to better your observational and perceptual skills so, you know, eff what anyone else thinks. But lastly, I’ve found that the public more often than not finds drawing to be a super interesting and laudable endeavor. You’ll hear things like “wow I wish I could do that” or “I could never do that!” a lot. 

Also, I guarantee that you’ll be better at drawing than the public at large, so you should never worry about it being bad. My documentation on this very subject is well known.