sitting and waiting – My Drawing Course

After giving up at the park the first time and going home and doing some drawing from the Bangkok Post, I felt I was ready for going back to the park and doing some more drawing of moving figures.

In a Sketchbook Walk and 360 Degree Studies, I had done some drawings in Suan Rod Fai (Railway Park) so as well as taking my sketchbook to the park I took some photocopies of those drawings with me, just to try something different. After cycling about 7 km to the park and riding round to find the places where I had done the original drawings I parked the bike up, took out my drawing tools and my photocopies and started to draw.

1 - Quick Sketches on Photocopy — 1 – Quick Sketches on Photocopy

The park was very busy and apart from a guy with a walking stick most of the people traffic was fast moving but I did manage to draw quite a few figures on the first photocopy and hone my technique which was to draw them in one spot but to keep watching and drawing as they moved.

2 - Quick Sketches on Photocopy over white Pen — 2 – Quick Sketches on Photocopy over white Pen

The next two efforts were a bit more difficult as the photocopies were quite dark so I sketched the figures in white pen and then went over them in felt tip. The colours were a bit off but the figures were actually quite good and in proportion.

3 - Quick Sketches on Photocopy over white Pen — 3 – Quick Sketches on Photocopy over white Pen

Having used oil pastel in the first part of this exercise and being quite happy with it I leaned against a bench on the other side of the path in the drawing above and started to sketch in 4 girls walking down the path, I worked from left to right sketching in the limbs then the shadow colours on the girls T shirts and shorts. I only managed to draw three of the girls as they were moving to quick. I then touched up the drawing after they had passed with shadow on their arms legs and faces and added hair then added the background, which was basically the view straight in front of me.

4 - Walking Women in Oil Pastel — 4 – Walking Women in Oil Pastel

The background in the next sketch wasn’t that great but I was pretty pleased with the job I did mixing two joggers into one the legs and body of the guy in the foreground were actually from two different joggers.

5 - Running Man in Oil Pastel — 5 – Running Man in Oil Pastel

I admire people who know their overweight or out of shape and do something about it and the bandaged guy in the next drawing was struggling but he kept going and he gave me a great opportunity to make another sketch.

6 - Walking Wounded in Oil Pastel — 6 – Walking Wounded in Oil Pastel

The last sketch was of a guy, dressed as a woman, walking through the park praying. I actually think he was posing for me but he was walking quite fast so it half of it is from memory.

7 - Guy in Womens dress walking through Park Praying in Oil Pastel — 7 – Guy in Womens dress walking through Park Praying in Oil Pastel

For this exercise I was to take every opportunity to practise drawing people. Looking at magazines and TV to get the practise that I need. After sitting and studying people in my last research point ‘People Watching‘ I thought I would get out and try and sketch some real live moving people, how hard could it be?

My girlfriends son was in Bangkok for the school holidays so we decided to take him to the railway park that I had visited for ‘A Sketchbook Walk‘. After a few laps on the bicycles he was ready for some ice-cream and I was ready for some drawing, so while his mum fed him in a nearby restaurant I sat down on a mound focusing on a part of the path where bicycles weren’t allowed to be pedaled and tried to draw as many people as possible.

The easiest to draw were the ones doing absolutely nothing of course or standing around stretching. I really struggled with the ones walking around because…they were moving!

After ten minutes of being bitten by ants and getting cheesed off with people walking round the back of me to see what I was doing. I decided that it was best to go home and do some practising from the newspaper.

The next day at work I went through a copy of the Bangkok post and cut out what I thought were the best photos I could find for practising drawing the moving figure.

3rd Drawing the Riot Act Bangkok Post 6B

The first newspaper article was from the international news section, about the riot police in China having drills, so in a 6B pencil I tried recreate the image depicting as much movement as possible,

4th Drawing Nairobi Bomb Blast - Bangkok Post — 4th Drawing Nairobi Bomb Blast – Bangkok Post

The second scene was a bombing in Nairobi, three rescuers carrying a possible fatality away from the blast. I chose to draw this in oil pastel as fast as possible and I think I did quite well to depict movement in the very rough sketch.

The next drawing was about the Nutcracker ballet in Bangkok I chose charcoal but I reckon with a more appropriate medium I could have done a lot better.

6th Drawing - Santa Claus of the South -Rotring — 6th Drawing – Santa Claus of the South – Rotring Pen

The next drawing was from a news article about some politician being nicknamed Santa Claus in Thailand’s troubled south. I built up the scene from the guy in the bottom right hand corner and worked my way around the table, from there I drew in the main character, hence not in proportion and then went onto draw the background.

7th Drawing - Burma Fire Brigade - Bangkok Post — 7th Drawing – Burma Fire Brigade – Bangkok Post

The next newspaper article was about the Burmese fire brigade dressed up as civilians for some demonstration or other. I worked very quickly in oil pastel again with this one and then went onto draw in the background.

Tesco Lotus Shopping Center

In Thailand, Tesco is known as Tesco Lotus, Lotus being the Thai partner and the supermarket is usually always in a shopping mall. On Sunday I work at the language centre on the 4th floor. Last week my first afternoon student cancelled so I decided to sit outside for two hours and draw the passers-by.

8th Drawing - Tesco Lotus 2 Hour Observation — 8th Drawing – Tesco Lotus – 2 Hour Observation

It took me about twenty minutes to draw the shop fronts inside the mall across from the language centre then in colour pencil I began to sketch people as they walked past, a lot of the time having to remember how they were stood seconds before as I couldn’t draw them fast enough.

I tried drawing in both colour pencil and pen this worked well superimposing the shape of one of the Thai teachers over the top of the other people. But then I made the mistake of drawing two people in the very background in pen, as they should have looked more faded than the others so I went over them in a white pen to fade them out a bit.

The worse mistake I made here was trying to draw the ceiling in afterwards which was a network of suspended panels ,lights and pipes.

Tag: sitting and waiting

Project the Moving Figure: Sitting and waiting – Part 2

Project the Moving Figure: Sitting and waiting – Part 1