Exercise 1

Drawing on the familiar

Use your sketchbooks to draw a space you are familiar with. Draw the location, the people and the activities taking place and use notes to capture your thoughts and feelings, dialogue and other details that can help bring the drawings to life.

So with this exercise I really thought about trying to come out of my comfort zone and really get to grips with drawing out and about, and drawing when people are around. Also drawing whole scenes as well as people are really out of my comfort zone, but I’m determined to really try.

In my sketchbook unit I learnt that I drew better with a loose flowing style, which gave a rough yet less naive quality, and I think practising this way of drawing I feel I would get better. I use a black brush pen for this.

I decided to go to my local Ikea store to sketch, it has lots of areas where you can sit and sketch and it has a restaurant, lots of people about and a busy place to be, with lots of coming and going.

Unfortunately I got there when it opened in the morning so it wasn’t that busy at that time, so I started by drawing some of the room set ups, then I would work on the people once it got busier. I started with a garden room set up to find my flow and practise a bit, I used the brush pen as spoken about above.

I then went on to sketch a living room set up, this was slightly challenging due to the angles, but as it’s only rough sketching I thought it wasn’t too bad.

The sketches above, I did two on one A4 page in my sketchbook, they both have an odd perspective and angle, which was because I had to stand and sketch these, and I had to keep moving out the way of other people, so kept loosing my place I was sketching from, but again as a quick sketch it wasn’t too bad, I feel I got down the basic shapes of the furniture and the details.

Whilst I was waiting for it to get busy I started to sketch some of the furniture in the market place, and the displays, I thought this would warm me up a bit and to get used to the brush pen more.

I’ve added some annotation notes so I know what each sketch is, as some look out of context on their own.

Once it got busier I then went on to draw the people inside, here we have a guy using one of the design services with a member of the Ikea team.

A couple with their children shopping together, the mum was busy a small trolly with a toddler in, and the dad had a baby carrier strapped to him with a tiny baby inside. This wasn’t the best sketch, but I had to draw super quickly before they walked off, it was like 1 min the most!

Then I drew a couple in front of me, again not the best but I was walking and sketching at the same time.

This guy above was taking a photo of one of the media units, unfortunately I couldn’t draw anymore as I had people standing behind me waiting to pass by.

When I was finished and outside I stayed and sat on a bench for a while, and managed to sketch this lady calling someone on her phone whilst pushing her full trolley to her car.

Although I found this exercise enjoyable, it was also very challenging I’m not sure Ikea was the best place to start, maybe somewhere less busy or where I wouldn’t be in the way as much. I enjoyed practising quick sketching and although some of the rough sketches are not great I feel I could go home and re-sketch some of them with the information I captured to make them better. Reportage illustration is pretty difficult, you have to know what information you want as quickly as possible! Most of the people illustrations I went for the way they were standing first, then if they were holding anything or doing an action.