I did a tutorial on SkillShare the other day hosted by Danish artist, Lasse Voss. I’m actively working on improving my Urban Sketching skills but don’t just want to master the landscape, buildings and cars, I want to populate my pictures with people.

I’d go so far as to say I want the people to be the primary focus, and the buildings etc. to be in the background to create some context.

In his class, Lasse covered figure proportions and eye-line perspective. Then we added some colour to our sketch project.

The eye-line perspective was really interesting and helped me to grasp how to put multiple people in a scene and maintain a realistic perspective for them – based on whether “the viewer” is standing or sitting.

I’ve tried drawing lots of people in a scene before and it looked off, but I was really pleased with how I was able to capture a group of people in a sketch and have the size and perspective of them turn out ok.

I’m new to sketching people this rough—insinuating at the detail rather than trying to capture it all, and this is going to be essential for doing urban sketching during our next travel adventure. More practice is definitely needed—but I’m going in the right direction.

I’m using this time of being anchored in Los Angeles, to hone my sketching and painting skills so that when me and my passport get let loose on the world again, I won’t be too intimated to start drawing a group of people in a scene.