Five Top Tips for Observation Drawing

Observation drawing is a wonderful way to connect with the world around you, borrow from it and make your drawing practice all the richer for it. Here are five tips to get you started with your observation drawing journey.

What you need to bring

Here we go! You have 10 minutes to spare while you wait for the train, so let’s settle in and draw something. 

Get your sketchbook - it should be small, no bigger than A5. You want to be able to hold it with one hand and not be precious about it; there will be plenty of smudges and half-finished faces inside. Your paper shouldn’t be too thin, so you have the option to add quick watercolours. I put all my tools in a roll-up pencil wrap, so I can see all my pens and pencils at all times. It’s a game-changer and allows you to draw standing up by just putting the roll on your arm. In it, you should find :

• a black ink brush, to do strong black areas quickly and create dynamic thin-to-thick black lines

• a fine liner around 0.4 - your staple for any and all lines 

• watercolour pencils - watercolours made easy and quick ! A touch of these pencils on your drawing to dilute directly, or on the page opposite to use as a palette. 

• a water-refillable brush that will allow you to paint anywhere. No need for a cup of water!

Never use a pencil - pencils allow us to be gentle, soft, and hesitant. When drawing on the go, you want confidence in your lines.

 

Put down the foundation of your drawing first

You’ve sat down to draw someone reading on a bench. Now you have to be quick because there’s no telling when they’ll move. Let’s put down the essential lines first. What drew you to that scene? What’s special about the way they are sitting? Is it the curve of their back against the straight lines of the bench? Put down the foundations of your drawing, and look at the whole figure. Don’t start with a detail because it's likely you won’t have time to treat the whole scene that way before they move.

Go from the most general and important shapes to more subtle details. The longer that person stay sat down, the longer you can dive in. This is an exercise in understanding the shapes that compose what you see, and in getting the confidence to lay them down quickly. 
 

The power of perception 

What’s wonderful with observation drawing is that you are translating the real world into your own perception of it. What do you choose to draw? What do you choose to omit? What is it about that corner of the room which drew your eye?

You are effectively training your brain to really look and understand what things are made of; their lines, colours and shapes. We have a tendency to draw what we think something should look like - this is what a nose should look like or a body. But the more you draw from observation, the greater your visual catalogue; every new person you draw expands your knowledge of character drawing. When drawing, look at your subject as much as, or more than, you look at your page. 
 

Respect other people's privacy

I used to draw a lot of portraits on the London tube. My challenge was one person per station. Mostly people didn’t notice me, and when they did I asked if it was okay and if they wanted to see. Often this resulted in nice little interactions. But one time, I was drawing someone and they got really upset and got off the tube.

I was completely shaken and ashamed; I'd never thought I could offend anyone by sketching them. I’ve since realised that drawing someone is quite an intimate experience, and can be seen as an invasion of privacy - in French, the term for sketching someone’s likeness is “croquer” - to bite. Be aware of that when drawing strangers. If you are sitting quite close to them it’s best to ask and acknowledge them. After all, you wouldn’t want someone taking your picture without your consent.

Observation can help your professional development

Drawing from observation has been a great help to further my skills, but it’s also gotten me jobs! There’s lots of ways you can transfer your observation skills to your professional career. Let me tell you how: 

Portraits 
Good portraiture skills are always helpful as lots of events like having live portrait painters as another fun activity for party-goers. There’s also lots of jobs online for people and pet portraiture.

Travel diaries
Drawing as you travel or drawing the city you live in can lead to jobs for local shops and business-owners. If you’ve drawn a nice shop front, go and show the staff - they might want your art!

Drawing for events
I have often used drawing as a free ticket to events and festivals. Put yourself forward as a reportage artist with the promise of lots of beautiful drawings capturing the event for your clients to use alongside photography on their social media. This is a really fun way to experience events and will surely lead to you meeting lots of artists and performers who could do with an illustrator for their own projects.

Have fun drawing on the go!

Lucie is an illustrator from the South of France. She recently published her autobiographical graphic novel Je Ne Sais Quoi with Jonathan Cape, and is the author of the Enola Holmes comics. She has traveled the world with her sketchbook but is happiest at home in London, where she's lived for the last 10 years. She has worked on theatre and film sets, painted murals and pub windows, illustrated books in the UK and abroad, and she hopes her creative juggling never stops.