Urban Sketching Handbook People and Motion: Tips and Techniques for Drawing on Location (Volume 2)

The second book in Gabriel Campanario’s Urban Sketching Handbook series has just been released: People and Motion: Tips and Techniques for Drawing on Location. Identical in format to the first in this series, Architecture and Cityscapes, the latest book is a succinct, compact volume that focuses this time on people in the urban landscape – how to capture their poses and moves accurately and expressively. It’s jam-packed with practical information and inspiring examples for both the beginner and the more seasoned urban sketcher. Although we could study and practice drawing the human form by attending traditional life drawing sessions, Campanario sees sketching people in their natural settings as having the additional benefit of teaching us about our community. “People are the life of a city. To draw them is to get to know the place,” he says. While acknowledging that drawing people can be challenging and frustrating, Campanario emphasizes the fun in sketching people around us and encourages interacting with subjects. “Learn their first and last names,” he suggests. “Ask the market vendor where his fruit comes from. Or compliment – and tip – the busker for the song he played while you drew him.” Including people in sketches “can introduce you to some very interesting folks with great stories about themselves.” The meat of the book examines six keys as they relate to drawing people: proportion, contour, gesture, expression, context and likeness. While including tips such as classic studio drawing lessons (an adult’s total height is about seven-and-a-half to eight times the head height), Campanario stresses ideas that can be practiced in the real world, such as while using public transportation or in a cafe. Most interesting and useful to me was the section on capturing gesture. As I’ve seen week after week in his Seattle Times column, Seattle Sketcher, Campanario is a master of this principle. How does he manage to “freeze the moment” in an often rapidly moving scene and put it on paper? “I like to take as much time as I can just watching until I can spot the move that I want to capture,” Campanario says. Showing an example of basketball players, he explains, “I watched several free throws at my son’s basketball game until I ‘saw’ the pose I wanted to sketch.” Another useful section is about capturing body and facial expression to indicate a subject’s emotions. “Internalizing the emotions of your subjects will make your sketches of people livelier and full of expression. Is the person you’re drawing alert, relaxed, cheerful, or concentrating?” Context, another of the book’s keys, is an important element of urban sketching. Three years ago when I first began taking my sketchbook out with me, I used to sketch a lot of people’s faces while riding the bus or in a coffee shop. Although I remembered exactly where I’d been when I made those sketches, the sketches themselves didn’t show any information about that. Where was this floating head sketched? It took me quite a while to understand that if I’d just include a little of the context, the picture would tell more of a story. I could have figured this out much more quickly had I read Campanario’s succinct instruction: “A hint of the environment is enough to turn an isolated portrait into a true scene that captures a moment of time. Even if you are focusing on the subway commuter sitting across from you or the musician playing on the street, adding elements such as windows, the city skyline, or a lamp post will make the sketch more complete.” The final section of the book is a gallery of sketches by artists in the worldwide urban sketching community, including many of my favorites. An illuminating aspect of all the sketches featured in the book (as well as in the series’ first book) is that the artists have included the approximate length of time they took to make each sketch. Although I am a relatively fast sketcher myself, I am amazed and inspired by how much story can be told in a mere 10- or 20-minute sketch. If you have an hour or two to spare, it’s wonderful to be able to use that time to flesh out an entire urban scene. But what if you have only the length of a coffee break? You can still tell a story with a sketch – one that only you can tell. That’s what urban sketching is all about.

If you love going out and sketching people quickly from life but sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed at the challenges that brings, then this is your book. If you can already draw people, the author gives you strategies for getting them down quickly while drawing on location. However the author also covers some of the basics in a chapter on proportions, gesture, likeness, etc. If you have no experience sketching people there are more comprehensive books available on figure drawing (a life drawing class would be extremely beneficial). The author covers such subjects as how to apply different media in sketching on location as well as etiquette involved in drawing people in public. He also gives resources for sharing your work online. You can go solo of course but you can discover the rewarding world of "urban sketchers.” This book is aimed at those of us who enjoy the deep pleasure of bringing our sketchbooks everywhere we go and sketching the life going on around us. If you enjoy people watching, this book will help you take it to the next level.

There are two publishers for this book as far as I know. One's Quarry Books and the other Basheer Graphic Books. This book on people and motion is the second in the Urban Sketching Handbook series. The first one is on architecture and cityscape. The version I bought was from Quarry Books and the book's construction quality is exactly the same as Basheer's version. Just like the first book, it's still a compact size 112-page paperback. The book features a bunch of tips on sketching people and figures. These are quite useful tips curated by author and sketcher Gabriel Campanario from various artists. Some tips I use often and some are new ones I can't wait to try. It's nice to see how other artists tackle sketching figures. There are tips on how you can draw proportional figures, contour drawing, capture gesture, liveliness and action. The book talks about basic proportion for the head and body. What I felt lacking is perhaps there should have been a few more pages on observational drawing techniques such as how to draw a tilting head as you see it. For that, I suggest getting the book Keys to Drawing . The last section is a gallery of sketches grouped by the type of media they were drawn with. There's even a list of etiquette tips that talks about how you should react or behave in public, and a helpful list of online links that point to Urban Sketchers, SketchCrawl, The Sketching Forum and Portraits Without Mercy. Check them out. This book's for beginners with basic drawing skills. The tips provided are easy to follow so it makes figure drawing less daunting and more fun. (See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Very good descriptive book on how to sketch people and movement in a few steps. There is even some blank pages to practice on if you care to. The book is small in size being just a little more than 5" x 8". It is easy to carry with many great sketching tips as well. This book is an inspiration and motivator for someone new to sketching or an experienced sketcher as well.

Good illustrations and great advice

This has been a really helpful little guide on sketching people on the fly. Love the various ideas and different methods suggested. I've been pretty successful since incorporating some of these ideas by incorporating people into some of my "urban" (really country sketches). I also appreciate the size of this book which fits nicely into my sketching bag.

I love every one of the books in this series. Haven't run across a bad one yet. I keep them on my desk and refer back form time to time. Very useful and I love the size of the book. Easy to pick up and throw in your bag and thumb through as time allows.

Excellent reference book. Full of examples of artists work with tips on each page. I especially like the listing of the paper, size of the sketch and the sketching materials used with each example. The small format means you can take it anywhere. Which I do!

Dá uma ideia do que é urban sketching, mas pode decepcionar que espera aprender um guia para aprender a desenhar

Good info in a summary type form

Must read. Great book in fact the whole collection is highly recommended. To the point and a great approach to improving your skills

esta en ingles pero de nuevo ,eso no es un obstaculo, el libro es muy ilustativo

Small and compact, this is a great book to carry around. As a beginner, this is a lovely resource to dip into. I tend to carry it round with my sketchbook and dip in before I start sketching to help me focus.