sketching moving people plein air or out and about

pub terrace in Runswick Bay, watersoluble ink

Sometimes, when sketching landscape, people catch my interest and in the midst of something else I'll draw them. These are a random selection from various sketchbooks. All very very fast attempts to catch people moving, absorbed in what they are doing. That interests me more than doing a posed portrait.

At the National Gallery, biro and Lyra pencils

I worked in biro watching the crowds and added the colour later at home, keeping to a limited palette of warm and cool browns. They were absorbed in looking at the paintings, some wearing the headphones with commentary, one little old lady in an obviously very expensive suit with incredibly wide padded shoulders from the '80s.

Ros at Hartshill Hayes and passing dog walkers, pencil

Ros sketching along the canal, Wolff carbon pencil

Glen sketching , coloured pencil

Sue and Pauline on the beach - evening, getting cold, windy, water soluble ink smudged with fingers

Here 3 of us had spent the day painting on the beach, it was evening, the sun was about to set. I'd just finished the last painting of the day, was cold now, and was waiting for the other 2 to finish theirs so we could go and warm up. I worked in watersoluble pen and did 3 lightning quick sketches - one of the friends and the other 2 of the sun setting as they finished and packed up.

a sketch done during a very very very boring talk! ink pen on a scrap of paper

This one was done to alleviate the boredom of an excruciatingly bad demo by someone - I forget his name thankfully but he was a retired bank manager, stood in front of the canvas so noone could see a thing(!) and when we could see .... it wasn't worth the wait - really* -sketching however badly was more interesting and enabled me to zone him out for a while!

*I'm not being unkind - the whole audience were yawning!

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