I’ve been commuting to London by train from the-back-of-beyond-Berkshire* for the past several months. It’s a substantial journey, three different trains and a minimum travel time of 1-1/4 hours each way. I was getting bored.
Then in March, I saw a young woman wearing thigh-high boots and slim jeans, an elegant coat with puffy sleeves and pleats in the back, and a hat … all she needed was a feather in her hat and a sword, and she could have been d’Artagnon**
I started paying more attention to what the young women are wearing (or not wearing as it so often seems to happen) and thought, there’s a story in here, and then I thought… what would Jane Austen think? Shock — gasp — swoon! … but actually, Jane would have just written about it and I fancied doodling, so naturally thought of her sister, Cassandra, the watercolourist.
To cut a long story short, Miss Austen cordially invites you to read her blog …
So I started drawing people on the train. It’s not particularly polite to stare, and I really don’t want to let them know, especially since I plan on being cruel about their taste in clothing later. So Miss Austen’s sketching technique is really more mental than actual. I watch them out the corner of my eye and make notes in my head about the colours, the fit, the amount of flesh exposed and any other pertinent details. Then on the NEXT train, I whip out the sketchbook and furiously draw as quickly as I can, trying to get it all down before it disappears. If there’s time and I can do it unobserved, I have been known to sneak a quiet photograph in for reference.
But sometimes it’s just not possible. I only got the briefest glimpst of the The Soldier’s Boots as the girl thundered down the stairs running for the Tube. I held up traffic (not a popular thing to do in the London Underground!) as long as I could to get as good a look as I could. Fortunately, they were amazingly big for being on such a small person and I managed to catch them pretty well.
It’s not that I’m fascinated by feet or shoes (ok, I am), but on the one or two occasions when I’ve actually drawn from life, I figure no one’s going to beat me up if I’m only drawing them from the knees down.
Occasionally I forget to bring a sketchbook and then have to make do with whatever is at hand, e.g., the margins of the free newspaper. The example here are notes for a post (“Wherein fancy-dress costumes become every day wear”).
Some of the sketches I leave as pencil sketches, sometimes adding ink into the sketchbook. After scanning, I colour in some of them using a big soft brush and low pressure & density in Photoshop. The next one, when I get around to it, will be mostly yellow … I’ve been noticing lots of it lately. Maybe it’s a summery colour and people are wanting to cheer themselves up. After that first bit of hot weather, we’ve had an awful lot of rain (again).
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* Berkshire in England, not NEW England, if you happen to be a James Taylor fan
** d’Artagnon is the 4th Musketeer, the 3 Musketeers were Athos, Porthos† and Aramis‡. There’s a book. And numerous films. Think Johnny Depp in “Pirates”, but scrubbed up clean.
† Yes, Captain Archer’s dog was named after an 18th C French mercenary
† Yes, just like the cologne
