I have always sketched people, at home and on my travels. This winter, with little travel planned, I naturally gravitated towards my local train station. This gave me people going about their business, too busy to notice me, too concearned about catching their train.
I position myself, often perched or leaning, and my ‘models’ enter my line of vision, they enter my drawing and they then have the choice to move on if they do not wish to be included. I love it when someone sits opposite me and stays quite happily – rarely do they ask to see the drawing as they often move on to catch their train. More often that not my models are so focused on their phone, game, music they pay very little attention to anyone else. Am I the only one still interested in people watching and listening to snippets of conversation?
The drawings above include a ticket collector – before permission was needed (BR informed me last month that I could draw on the platform but not their staff) french cafe ladies and my first sketching day in India. Slowly a crowd of men and children gathered to watch, the small boy kept his hand on my arm as they all chatted happily giving me advice and hot tea!
To help you ‘develop your cloak of invisibility’ here is a great article on drawing people in public by Roz Stendahl