People & Faces Workshop

 On Monday afternoon I took a mini workshop through Etchr. The subject was drawing people and faces quickly as an urban sketcher. I've had a lot of practice putting figures into my sketches but I tend to fuss and take my time. I have been approached to possibly do sketches at a wedding ceremony...I haven't committed myself yet but I thought this workshop might give me some hints and it did. The workshop was given by Ro'isin Cure' from Ireland. I took a workshop with her at the Urban Sketching Symposium in Porto a few years ago. It was a good workshop. The colors she usually uses are Paynes grey, burnt umber, burnt Sienna, yellow ochre, and opera or opera pink. You can pretty much mix any skin tones from these colors.

She sketches people directly in ink using a fude fountain pen that she turns over so she is using the other side of the nib. She gets lines that are almost like sketching in pencil. She also sketches in brown waterproof ink. I have a fude pen but it is filled with waterproof black ink and of course wouldn't sketch the way hers did. So I was at a bit of a disadvantage in that respect. We worked from a reference page of sketches she had already done and she explained her process for each sketch as we followed along. She tends to leave a lot of the sketch white (especially on the face). 

She also spoke about the differences in sketching adults vs children and gave a few hints about sketching the "older" adults. Here are my results.