Hey! I recently got back from a trip to New York for the production of our
course people drawing people at Sketchbook Skool. And drawing people is
something many artists struggle with, and it's quite possible that, like me, you
have bought books to learn from. But what I found with most books that teach about
drawing the human figure is that they're quite boring; it's all very theoretical
about building from a stick figure, drawing an egg for a head, dividing it
with lines for the placement of the features, counting imaginary heads for
the length of a person so you draw them in the right proportion. It's so pretty
good probably to know, and it may be helpful for some people but when you are
drawing from observation, does it really help? Can you really use that? None of the
artists that I have come across in the recent years use that theoretical
approach and there's one thing that is for sure:
there is no one way of drawing people! And at Sketchbook Skool, we love to
learn and share many approaches so we can all learn our own. We've worked very
hard to get this course together. Building a course from scratch is
exciting and every time it's quite a puzzle;
production-wise, budget-wise, and creatively too. Finding the right people
for our faculty, figuring out the course material and the course structure. We
wanted to fit in a lot of information, inspiration, and many demos to show that
there is no one way of drawing people. The week of the actual filming of the
course material is at the heart of this production after a lot of preparing. And
during the week of the shoot I did my best to record some stuff to give you a
peek behind the scenes. Of course for me this week started with traveling from
Amsterdam to New York - and what better excuse to practice drawing people? At the
airport there are plenty of people to draw and I found an interesting point of
view to draw them. Lucky we will cover perspective and foreshortening in the
course too!
It's a seven-hour flight to New York but even by the time we were taking off, I
filled another double page. And then once you're at your destination, as you do, you
take a dumb selfie in Brooklyn to prove it. I arrived in the weekend so I warmed
up my people drawing skills in coffee shops and at a life-drawing session
together with Tommy Kane Danny and his son Jack. I'm not going to share the
drawings we did of naked people in there but it was fun and it was a great way to
get our minds set to drawing people. We had a week long video shoot and each
morning I took the train to Bushwick where our studio was situated. For this
course we had a completely different way of working than ever before: we rented a
studio for a full week, invited five artists to share their expertise with us.
Vin Ganapathy, France Belleville Van Stone, Carlos Aponte, Jason Das and we even flew
Felix in from Europe. And of course Danny and I teach in the course too.
So we are in the studio
getting ready for first drawing with Vin.
Renting a studio like this instead of filming the artists in their own
environments like we usually do, makes sense for this course. We want the course
to be a guide for drawing people as much as possible. For it to be a course you
can get back to again and again to study the different approaches to drawing
portraits, how to tackle foreshortening, how you capture people moving, and much
much more. We hired professional models for each
artist to draw, and filming them all on the bright white background gives a very
clean and clear focus on the subject. We also interviewed all the artists in the
same setting and during those interviews we try to get all the answers to
questions we got from all of you in our community about drawing people.
It's cold in New York! Well it actually doesn't really matter because the in the studio all day
Yesterday man a fantastic day. We needed to figure out a lot; how
to film certain things, how to approach certain things, like interview questions
and stuff like that. So today wie'll be a little bit more prepared - we know what
to do let's say it that way. Vin did an amazing job doing five demos. Amazing.
We had a guest; a student from Sketchbook Skool, Andrea. And today we'll have a guest as well.
I'm looking forward to another day in the studio!
There is so much equipment involved in a video shoot and a continuous download of
data from memory cards to hard drives. And where people are working hard you need snacks!
Look at the snack table!
O my gosh. And there's bagels too...
But what I'm more interested in is this bag
these are Carlos Aponte's Ecoline markers he works magic with those
We had fantastic models selected for each artist in the course and I think this
was the most fabulous model of all
Carlos couldn't stop drawing and while he was waiting for the videographers
to do some technical adjustments he drew Danny
And then Da nny drew Carlos while he was capturing movement of his model
Seeing all the artists says work so closely and getting to pick their brains
about their techniques and approaches just made our fingers itch to draw. Even
while taking notes for later use in the course material, Danny was drawing stuff
Aand when we went for drinks at the end of the Thursday shoot we had a bit
of a portrait party happening!
I feel so very lucky that for my job I get to work
and hang out with my sketch heroes. And we also invited three lucky
Sketchbook Skool students to come take a look behind the scenes in the studio, and meet
their heroes for a sketch-off, or even a portrait party.
Jen, how are you feeling about sitting here next to Felix Scheinberger?
I'm so excited! Amazing. Star struck!
Are you? You'll be drawing him! In just a few minutes.
It's easy! Just a bald head and beard.
Just draw an egg and then some hairs
Yes, and I will draw you -ok
All the teachers had the big challenge to draw their models in movement,
foreshortening, capture them in ten-minute session portraits,
and do a self-portrait as well
oh and yeah the blue booties- I have to mention them. On and off again they went. We had to keep
the white background crisp and white, so in one week we went through a big bag of
these very charming blue booties everyone had to wear. Halfway through the
week we ended up having to repaint the background anyways, in spite of our efforts
Looks like you're working real hard
And then there was the last day, Friday. We had been shooting all week so you can
imagine we were kind of exhausted and then we had to perform, Danny and I.
Doing demos, recording lesson introductions and recaps, in which we are analyzing all the
learnings from each lesson... But we got through it! With the final video shot, we could
say: it's a wrap! We got into editing mode right away and now it's here!
The People Drawing People course, and you can sign up for it right now! So if you want to
feel more confident about drawing people, this is your course. And you'll find a
wonderful community of like-minded people of all skill levels at SketchbookSkool.com
I'll see you in class!