Yesterday, Bryan asked if I approach people to sit for an on-location sketch, and if I show them my sketchbook.
Here's a recent example of one where I didn't ask, they didn't notice, and I never showed them. They were pretty far away across the restaurant. He was bent over his cellphone and she was talking to him, waving her wrist around in big circles as she made her points. Once in a while he would grunt a syllable in response, but he never looked up from the phone until his scrambled eggs arrived.
What I was thinking about as I was drawing was not just the contrast of poses and shapes and colors. I was also interested in trying to convey the relationship between the people, as it appeared to me from their body language.
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Previously: Caught Looking
Dead Air Syndrome
9 comments:
Haha, that's pretty grim! I notice a lot of couples I perceive this way in cafes and such.
Love the observation of her hand gesture. That's the first time I've seen someone capture that weird thing people do in a drawing.
Thanks, Nick.
By the way, at a blog reader's suggestion, I'm experimenting with eliminating the Captcha step (apparently Blogger's spam detection is better now) and also allowing comments from users who are not registered with Blogger to comment.
As regulars know, I like to keep the forum very open, and welcome off-topic comments, relevant links, and divergent opinions. On the rare controversial topic, I just hope people will refrain from any ad hominem remarks to keep the discussion productive. As a rule, I only delete obvious spam.
If you leave a comment or a question, and I don't respond, forgive me! I'm often in a rush, but I read and appreciate all of your comments.
These narrative type sketches would be fun for readers to caption. This one makes me think of Woody Allen movies in which the couples are on completely different wavelengths.
I do this a lot - sketch people in restaurants, but yours is so alive - such personality and life to this drawing! The hands do it, I think. Love it, and once again you give me more to aspire to. Toulouse-Lautrec would be proud of this, I think.
So... Do you think they're married?
Thanks for making it easier to post, James! I've given up attempting to comment on several occasions due to the wonky captcha system...
Kind of sad really. It looks like she is trying to get his attention by waving her hand in his face, but he is 'tuning her out'...I have never got the nerve up to do sketches in public...yet. I do plein air on the beach, where people walk by, make a comment or two then go away. I guess I just have to 'tune people out' and not be so self concience.
Sketching at a restaurant so often means either you are alone quite a bit or who ever you are with, is alone quite a bit. Your sketches tell us more about the artist than those in the sketch - as is true with all art.
Thanks for the inspiration James. These story-packed, simple sketches have changed my outlook on sketchbooking.
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