Tips for Sketching Crowds
Part 2 of Tips and Tricks to better people sketching
Last month’s post was about sketching better heads and faces. When you get this month’s newsletter, I will be traveling in India (and drawing lots of crowds) so I’m going back into my teaching notes and sharing some useful tips for doing just that.
Notes on Crowds
Here is the gist of what those notes say. (It’s best understood in conjunction with the little sketches next to them)
• If you are standing on flat ground, and drawing the crowd before you, whether people are closer to you or farther away, their heads will line up around your eyeline.
- Not exactly, of course, there will be a zone they will fall in, with some variation for differing heights.
- This does not include the heads of little kids or of people bending over, stooping, or sitting.
• Neatly lined-up static figures don’t feel like a crowd. Lots of overlap and dynamic action help.
• Place people at varying depths in the picture frame, with more detail on those closer to you. The background figures can be simple silhouettes.
Crowds are fun to draw. I always draw in at least a few characters that either speak to me or speak to the place. At this crowded urban beach in Chicago, the person in the pink bathing suit caught my eye first, and when this ice cream vendor came through, I had to add them in. The rest are “beach crowd people” in varying degrees of detail.
Try this out: Take 5 quick shots at a place you think of as “full of people and energy” and look at your images. Chances are, the images don’t match your perception and are more “empty” than you think they will be.
A sketch of a crowd isn’t a capture of one instant. It captures the experience of being there, which is an experience over time. You probably need more people and movement in it than any of those snapshots you took.
In the piece above, I just kept adding people until the sketch felt like it echoed the collective energy of the people, movement, and sounds on the street. Not an exact science. Just keep going and you will know when your sketch and a place feel the same.
I hope these tips help!
That top image of a farmers market and the notes that go with it are (mostly) from my book, The Urban Sketching Handbook: Techniques for Beginners which has a whole chapter dedicated to sketching people.
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Workshops, and Substack Memberships
• This page has links to all my 2025 workshops with spots open, and 2026 workshops that you can get on the waiting list for. Provence is down to the last spaces. If drawing people on location is what you want to learn, then the Vietnam workshop in October 2025 might be what you are looking for.
• Want to draw more in 2026? Upgrade your membership to be a paid member of this Substack, and join in on monthly sessions all year round for just $60/year.
Sketching Together: February session for paid subscribers is on Friday the 28th. Images for the session will be sent out by the middle of the month. I will just be back from India so you will get some scenes of crowds from my travels to sketch from.
Upgrade here to join the Sketching-Together group
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• Gift a subscription, using this link for as little as $7 for one month, or $60 for a whole year’s worth of sessions.
• The wonderful team at Art Toolkit (I use their Folio palette) shared these links for you. Use discount code SUHITASKETCH10 for a 10% discount at arttoolkit.com
Coming Up
A week in March is when the One Week 100 People challenge takes place. Mark your calendars and make some time for it. Even if you don’t get to 100 people, it’s a fun way to get back into the swing of drawing people.
In March, the Sketching Together group will end the week of the challenge with a session where we draw 30 people in 30 minutes. Yes, it is crazy, but we did it last year and it is a blast!