Drawing People

My quick, not realistic, and probably lazy way.

The way I draw people

I follow (very roughly) a rule that the body is in sevenths. One seventh being the head, three sevenths the body and three sevenths the legs. Be careful not to do the head too big (it used to be a mistake I always made) - if anything make the head too small.

And I don’t do much with limbs - it’s all a bit amateurish really but I think it serves it’s purpose, and it’s very quick to do. So it’s basically just a small head, a torso and lines for legs and arms; if I even bother with arms at all - it depends on the scale.

People for a sense of scale

Some buildings look OK when we sketch them - but we don’t really get a sense of scale. You can partly work out the size from the scale of the doors and windows but that sounds like doing some work. I’s better for it just to be obvious because of the size of the people - both those that are near and those that are far away.

People for a sense of ‘being there’

It is unlikely that we will actually sketch somewhere where there are no people. So we could ignore them and just draw the buildings; but this would have a slightly false feel - probably because it would be false. And particularly for interiors, were we really in an empty room?

---

What’s coming?

This Substack is intended to expand upon the ideas of urban and landscape sketching with minimal materials, to provide examples and inspiration.

It’s all about getting your thoughts and feelings out onto paper without too many rules to follow - this is sketching - not drawing.

Thanks for reading this and coming on the journey with me. Enjoy the journey and the destination can just look after itself.
All the best,
Peter