Delivering my Manuscript

Happy New Year! Are you all having a lovely holiday? Looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow?

Actually, I am. I'm really enjoying writing my book on sketching people and it's coming on really well. I am well ahead of schedule, which is good news, because I won't have much time once the work for the new children's library mural kicks in, not to mention all the school visits I have lined up between now and mid March.

My deadline for delivering the text is staggered. It's divided into 5 stages. I have to upload 20% of the content each month, between February and June. Since the spring will be tricky, I uploaded my first 20% just before Christmas. Because of the holidays, I've not had any feedback yet.

As well as the Drawing Strangers is Scary chapter I was telling you about last time, I have now completed the book's final chapter, called Capturing the Moment (if you remember, I am not taking them in order). After all the sections with more specific tips about how to draw people, which I've mostly yet to write, I finish up by sharing techniques for getting more out of your sketches. 

This section talks briefly about the difference between an urban sketch of a person and a portrait. Urban sketching is not so much about getting a likeness when you draw someone, as presenting a snapshot of them: a person as part of a time and place. That's why I never ask permission when I sketch people - it has to be natural, because I want to catch someone going about their life, not posing. 

I talk about ways to soak up all sorts of peripheral information, to help place your sketch in-the-moment: bits of conversation, things that happen while you are drawing, observations about the weather etc, so that your sketchbooks don't only paint a very rich picture, but always take you straight back to where you were, like a visual diary.

As you know, I love incorporating this extra information, so I share techniques for adding text and having fun with the way you arrange things on a page, because the contents of your sketchbook does not have to match what's out there: you are free to experiment and play. 

I think next, I might tackle the section which talks about how to cope with the fact that people move. It's very inconvenient, but inescapable: they do it all the time. But fear not - I have lots of tips to share!