People are everywhere and they don’t stop, they move, travel and carry on with their activities as we go about the city. When we want to sketch them we need to be ready. Here is how you get to have fun and approach people drawing in various ways, losing your fear to draw people and what’s more making it a necessity for every sketch.

What will we cover

Inma Serrano will lead a life drawing session for the whole group and then two sessions (each for half the group) one in South Bank area and one in the Columbia Market/Brick Lane area

LIFE DRAWING SESSION:

This Life Drawing session is going to be divided in two big parts, both starting with a series of about 20 short poses of 1 minute and 20 short poses of 2 minutes. Then we slowly increase the time for the poses to 5 minutes maximum. At the end we will work on some motion drawing poses.

Life drawing techniques can be roughly divided into two categories: formulaic techniques and observational techniques. With the formulaic techniques, you apply a formula to locate some main anatomical landmarks. Formulaic methods would allow you in theory to be able to draw believable figures when they disappear by building up the body from interlocking shapes, after you trained your eyes and brain. It also speeds up the sketching time. Observational methods are based on how to rain the view.  They are slow to assimilate, there are no defined parameters, sometimes they can be frustrating because they involve abstract results that only can understand ourselves, but they are very interesting, because they are spontaneous and the drawing use to be very free and personal.

In these three hours of live drawing we will practice different exercises of both categories, always with the idea of ​​being able to put into practice this same way of drawing later during the street urban sketching session

STREET SESSION

During the session we will try to put into practice some of the techniques studied in the live drawing session drawing the figure, (such as continuous drawing, mapping, positive and negative, movement …) adding as a fixed element the environment and buildings, trying create a dialogue between the people and the city.

Rolf Schroeter will lead one session for the whole group in the Borough Market area and then two sessions (each for half the group) one in South Bank area and one in the Columbia Market/Brick Lane area

ORGANIZE THE FLOW

Our workshop focuses on drawing people in public, people that are following their unpredictable ways. Where drawing concepts, that base on exact and fine tuned planning of compositions, following a fixed intention might fail, we will face the task in another way. We will accept the process of drawing as an adventure with unpredictable outcome, and let ourselves joyfully go for it. It will be our small adventure into the city’s everyday live, and like any person, that goes for exploring the unknown, we will not walk unprepared, but will equip ourselves with a good set of techniques, concepts and skills.

My workshop will be divided in two parts.

In the first set we will deal with the problem of sketching an actually or potentially moving single person or group of people. We want to try to find and automate techniques to do this, so that we are able to achieve something usable in the limited time, without having our attention fully occupied, so we do not lose contact to the whole scene we want to capture.

We will practice:

• quick drawings of figures, in order to loosen our marks and to automate the pens movement
• experiments with degrees of abstraction – what does it need, to make a shape on paper a living thing? How can we use abstractions, to quickly capture a character, even in case, it is vanishing quickly?

In the second set we want to develop a concept of planning and composing a drawing of an unpredictable scene. We will learn, how to set up a stage on our paper, that will fill up, as the story of our drawing unfolds, ending up with an authentic record of our personal experience on the scene.

We will practice:

• understanding the role of the own viewpoint in relation to the people and structure of the city;
• identifying and solving the crucial decision points of a drawing, where analytic decisions must organise the otherwise spontaneous sketching process.

Using all this together, we will try to capture a lively and packed scene on our vibrant locations in a joyful way.

Learning goals

• Pushing participants out of their comfort zone, at their own level. From beginners starting to sketch to more confident participants, we aim to teach you something new and push you outside your boundaries, helping you experiment.
• Experiment with different techniques and ways of approaching a live sketching people situation, helping you find your own self expression.
• Using and trying different approaches to drawing people
• Improving mark making ability – with pen, with brush,
• Losing the fear to draw people
• Sketching people and their stories as they move

Timetable

Friday 17/5/19

17:00 to 17:30 Welcome at Vauxhall Gardens Community Centre

17:30 – 20:30 Life drawing session (whole group)  with Inma Serrano and with the Art Model Collective

21:00 Leave Community Centre – gather at local pub if desired.

Saturday 18/5/19

9 to 9:30 Meet up by Southwark Cathedral

9:30 to 12:30 Morning session (whole group) with Rolf at Borough Market

12:30 to 2:30 Lunch

2:30 to 5:30 Afternoon sessions (half group) with Inma and Rolf around South Bank area – meet up by Tate Modern front

6 pm Groups meet for sharing sketchbooks (at Topolski Bar)

Sunday 19/5/19

9 to 9:30 Meet up at Shoreditch High Street station

9:30 to 12:30 Morning sessions (half group) with Inma and Rolf around Columbia Road/Brick Lane Markets area

12:30 to 2:30 Lunch and sharing of sketchbooks (location tbc)

2:30 Group photo and departure

Participants

20 attendees maximum, 15 minimum, any level of experience is welcome

Travel and accommodation

You will need to arrange your own accommodation and travel. To help you decide the area see the map of the workshop below. Suggested sites to look for a good range of accommodation: booking.com or airbandb.com. Suggested areas London Bridge, Shoreditch

Travel: in London you will need an oyster card to go around (or a credit card with contactless payment which works the same in the underground and buses). We will walk a lot but meet at various public transport nodes.

Registration fee

£180 (fees are in GBP)

To book: e-mail Isabel: isabel@pushingyoursketchingboundaries.com for a registration form. (Payment can be via internet bank transfer or paypal – see link below).

Cancellation policy: All fees are refundable if cancelled more than 6 weeks prior to commencement of course (up to 5 April 2019). Bank charges will be deducted for the refund in the case of an attendee cancellation. If cancelled after the 5 April  up to to one week before the start of the course, a cancellation fee of £50 will be retained. No refund will be possible one week before the course.In the event of too few registrants, all monies will be refunded.

Workshop map

You can find the workshop map here

About the instructors

This workshop combines the abilities of :

Inma Serrano and Rolf Schroeter