Almost home to Dorking, I had a quick go at this middle-aged chap across the aisle. Hair is always so fascinating to draw: his was that very straight, sawn-off sort of hair that sits in sharp little lines like wires.
He moved as I drew, which you can see in the odd twist it’s given to his face in the drawing. But there you go. I choose to draw unsuspecting people on trains, I can hardly complain if they don’t pose perfectly for me.
I drew this friendly-looking old fellow on the Tube yesterday. As so often happens, he got off just as I was getting into it, but I go enough to feel quite happy with it.
He had a soft, comfortable look about him: an archetypal Grandad in his blue flat cap and enormous glasses. Quiet, still and composed in the way many elderly people are. An aspect of ‘You lot run about and squawk and jabber, you haven’t got a clue yet. I’ve seen most things, and I’m not in any rush.’
(Can we still say ‘elderly’, by the way? Is it ‘older person’ or something now?)
A semi-successful experiment with a different brushing style. To be honest, this was done so long ago I only dimly remember this lady, so not much on the verbal impressions side.
I quite like the washy quality of this, but it definitely looks too loose and uncontrolled to me. More successful Brushes to follow shortly…
Here’s the second of my experiments with (slightly) less linear drawings, from yesterday’s ride home.
The ability to overlay washes of colour in Brushes is one of the most powerful aspects of the app, I think. It’s a shame these sketches are always done too quickly to really make use of it. (Hockney is obviously the go-to guy on that.) But I got a bit of it going on here, and it’s come out okay.
There’s been a bit of a hiatus on these – I went to Bulgaria on a school skiing trip with my son, and he pretty much monopolised the iPad (Asphalt 6), so no chance to draw people on the plane, minibus, etc. Since then I’ve just been incredibly busy with work, and not doing much travelling. So not many brushes with any strangers.
Anyway, that changed yesterday, and I had a bit of an experiment (again) at getting away from straightforward line drawing.
This lady (yes, lady), with her near-spherical head, sat nice and still and I thought I’d try to get her with, literally, some broad brush strokes. It came out better than some previous experiments, anyway. There’s another one coming a bit later.
The people opposite seemed to have cottoned on to what I was up to. And the woman I wanted to draw – a pretty, spikily thin, immaculately smart woman in a sharp black suit – kept shifting about and lifting her paper in front of her face.
So I drew myself. My reflection was imprinted on the rushing darkness beyond the window, and it didn’t much matter if I spotted what I was up to. I kept nice and still, too.
Yes, I have come out looking more than a little sinister. Like some version of The Terminator, or a serial killer. Especially when, trying to replicate the dark reflective window, I shrouded the drawing in grey. All the stalkerish aspects of this project coming out.
Still, I quite like the drawing.
Here was an academic-looking lady absorbed in some papers on the Tube. Very much a British type – perhaps an English type: sober, dressed in browns and greys. Flat, sensible shoes. Perhaps a flat, sensible life. But also a friendly, intelligent face.
The sort of lady I might have met after one of the Family Services of my childhood, standing about at the back of a chilly church among the musty scent of ancient choir robes, drinking coffee that came out of a fat steel urn into pale blue cups, perched on pale blue saucers. Rich Tea and Nice biscuits. She was a Rich Tea and Nice biscuit sort of lady.
Tightened up again, but perhaps because this guy was as tight as they come. He should have played a villain in Blake’s 7.
In fact, the glossy black jacket he was wearing, buttoned to the throat, was pure Avon. (Younger readers, stop frowning. It’s not my fault you missed out.)
He was strikingly symmetrical, which is always a bit unsettling. Large, round, dark eyes gazing steadily across the carriage at me. I’m not sure he believed any of the fake ‘subject studying’ glances I kept giving the chap next to him. I’m not even sure those gleaming eyes weren’t boring deep into the darkest secrets of my soul…
A close-up, basically because I liked the way his ear had been – well, dog-eared, I suppose, by the arm of his glasses. Once I’d ‘zoomed in’ that much, I enjoyed just focusing on the details.
It reminds me of the lovely Adam Gopnik article on drawing I mentioned in a long-ago post, where his drawing teacher recommends finding shapes in the model, rather than trying to draw the model, as a way around preconceived ideas of what people look like.
It certainly helps me loosen up and take the line for a bit of a walk, to paraphrase the great Klee.
Here was a round, jolly fellow in his rail company uniform, gossiping with a colleague on the train.
The drawing’s rather tight and anxious: I think I’m better when I loosen up. But it’s another one for the archive, anyway. And I quite liked chucking in the background. It helps make thing feel more complete. A note from myself that I took forward into the next pictures, coming shortly…
I use the Brushes app on my iPad to sketch strangers. Usually this happens on the train, or the London Underground. But not always.
