- Hi, I am Kath MaCaulay and this is Pocket Sketching.

My outfit's a little bit absurd, but we're doing people this time and I want to make it easy for you.

This is a topographic map on a person.

I hope you come along and that you have a wonderful time.

(upbeat music) Hi, I am Kath MaCaulay, and this is Pocket Sketching.

I hope you enjoy coming along today.

This is gonna be a little bit different.

We're doing people, and I'm your model.

I thought a lot before doing this, but then people love this, so decided to do it.

Now you're noticing I'm wearing stripes.

Let me tell you about the stripes.

It's a topographic map.

No matter what I do, no matter where I go, you can see where the body is because of the stripes.

If I move quite a bit, let's say, let's have a good slouch.

There's a good slouch.

See the way the stripes go around the slouch?

What else?

Okay, watch, watch the stripes change.

You can get the stripes in with wax if you happen to have wax, but no matter what I do, you can see where I'm doing it.

Oh, here's another one that's kind of fun.

Stand on one leg.

Watch where the hips go.

Can you see that go out?

Well, that's the stripes.

The stripes will help you figure out where the body is in proportion to the background, in proportion to any props.

This table's a prop.

In proportion to other parts of the body.

It's everything I do, any place I move, you're going to see the stripes do things.

And that's gonna make it easier for you to figure out where to put the body.

If I intersect the chair, the chair is a prop.

This will make it easier for you.

I'm gonna sit, oh, by the way, no model can do this without a chair holding them up.

So you can include the chair.

That way you've got something.

You know what it looks like.

It makes it a little easier.

The shoes are kind of funny.

I mean, they're part of the whole deal, but you're beginning to get the idea.

Now, where do you start?

People start in different ways.

There are some traditional ways of starting.

Some people will put a plumb line on the paper from the top of the head to the floor, straight down, and it's on the paper.

They don't even bother to erase it.

Then some part of the body is on this side, some part of the body's on that side.

Some people see the body in geometric shapes, all, you know, circle, squares, rectangles, the whole thing.

I can't do that.

I can't see that at all.

Where I start is I look for a line that is continuous through the body or on an edge.

If I am, let's try, I'm gonna use my chair.

This is a higher chair than I'm used to using, but it'll work.

You can see the stripes move as I move.

Put a leg up here and creep down.

Okay, there's a line running along here and down here.

If you get that line, then everything else is related to it.

Once you make a mark on the paper, not quite used to a rolling chair.

Once you make a mark on the paper, you're started.

Now, some people in art class will tell you the body is seven and a half times the length of the head.

For goodness sakes, you can't even do the head.

You should worry about that.

The minute I put my head down, I change all those proportions.

If you want to do people, practice on people.

Practicing on animals works too.

A really good place to practice is on a foot.

Your feet go with you wherever you go.

You've always got one around, so does everybody else.

You look around a room, you're gonna see a gob of different feet in different positions.

It's instant practice to use a foot.

You can turn it, you can dress it.

I mean, there are all kinds of things you can do with a foot, and it's all human anatomy.

It's a great place to just practice.

Something that you're not gonna see is somebody standing like this for very long.

They just don't do that.

They move.

They're gonna do something.

They're gonna pick up something.

They're gonna move.

They're going to pick up something else.

They're gonna turn around, they're gonna look over there.

We are almost constantly moving, so don't worry about getting perfect proportions this way.

It's also dreadfully boring.

And while I'm at it, don't do a face dead on.

It's really hard to do.

Do a face either turned around all the way backwards or at least sideways.

Sideways, you've got a nose with a profile, a mouth with a bit of a profile, and a chin with a profile.

By the way, some of you will really, really enjoy this.

I learned this from a woman who does facial surgery.

She used to always pose like this and I didn't catch on for a really long time.

She'd look at the camera and pose.

You notice it just picks up the whole chin.

So when you're having a portrait done, you might think of doing that.

Look at the camera sideways and get your portrait.

It's kind of nice.

Anyway, that's just a total aside.

The proportions on the face, forget it, you're not ready for that.

From the side, you can get a little bit.

When you're doing the face, don't do it with a pen.

Instead, I could say pencil, but you're gonna erase and erase and erase.

Instead, use dilute watercolor, the stuff in the lid of your box, because if you get it wrong, you can easily lift it and put it in someplace else.

You get it right and you can strengthen it.

Put another line on when that's dry and it'll go darker and you'll have it right, but then there's more.

So you gotta see the more because it gets more fun.

I have a few things over here.

I think I'm wearing probably some fairly decent earrings.

We're gonna change that.

My sister gave me these.

They are relatively ghastly.

I refer to them as fishing lures, but you can't miss 'em, if the sun hits them.

I never wear them outside.

I would not be caught in these things, but they're great.

See if I can, why don't I just sit down because I have some other goodies to add and they're all here on my table and it takes just a minute to get this ready.

Meanwhile, you're seeing the stripes move, and I want you to see that.

I would imagine you can stop this.

Why is it hard to put 'em on when you really wanna get 'em on?

You can stop this at any point and hold a pose if you like a pose.

And then if I don't have any good poses, I'm sorry.

It reminds me of a T-shirt I saw on a tourist.

"Sorry I'm late, I didn't wanna be here".

I loved the T-shirt.

And if I'm talking and it bothers you, well it should.

Just a minute, I'll show you why.

I think I can do this rather quickly, because it's quite important.

I'm going to show you two sketches I did.

One is a demonstration for a class, and I think I can get this where can be seen, right about there.

They asked me to do a demo.

I'd asked them to sketch each other and put them on a 25 minute limit.

I sketched this as a demo, nobody laughed.

I thought that was nice.

But while they were sketching, I did another one.

Nobody was talking.

This is the difference between right brain and left brain.

If you hear your language, you'll go into the left brain, which is your logical language side.

So if you're working, do not be listening to your language.

Music is usually okay, but conversation is not.

Notice the difference in quality.

It's enormous.

This one is sensitive.

That means you dropped into the meditative creative side of your brain.

Once you pop out, it's hard to get back in.

So don't hear language when you're working.

Turn the sound off if you're using this for a model.

Okay, what else do I have?

I have a hat.

This is kind of fun.

This hides part of my face, and I mean to have it do that.

It's green, my hair is red for a reason and it's supposed to look like a mess.

Then I'm gonna hide a lot on my face, but I have to talk for a few minutes.

And then how do you do a face?

What are the proportions, more or less?

If the person's wearing glasses, it's easier.

I'll just get this up and out of the way.

The bridge of the glasses on the bridge of the nose, usually.

How much of the eyebrows can you see or not see?

How much lower than the glasses are the nostrils?

You're not gonna see this part of the nose usually, but you'll see the nostrils if it's coming at you.

The mouth is really very small.

The chin is very distinct.

Get that.

If I turn sideways, now you're gonna get the glasses.

Oh, the side of the glasses comes over the base of the ear.

About a fifth of the ear is above four fifths are below.

This is just relative because if I change my head position, everything is gonna change.

And the way you're gonna get good at this is you're gonna practice.

I mean, that's the only way you can get good at it.

Now, a few more goodies, I'm not quite done.

What you look for is what got your attention in the first place.

Was the person wearing absurd jewelry?

If so, catch it.

Did the person have on a major giant belt buckle and a huge belly?

Well, make the belly more so.

You can see the stripes go around and they come apart going around something round where you can make 'em come farther apart and really have fun.

You could do caricatures.

That's fun.

What else?

I've got most everything I'm gonna do to me.

But now a little bit more.

What is the person doing?

It's the most important thing of all, and I do definitely want to, by the way, the bangs are to help hide part of my face.

I'd be sure this hair is a mess.

Okay, and now if I were posing for you, gotta be sure I can do this.

This is a higher chair that I'm accustomed to, so I'll make sure I'm on it and I can stick a foot up here.

And now basically, I'm the town lush.

Oh, but I don't have the hat on right, you can see too much.

There you go.

I think that'll work.

Now, every time I've moved, you've probably seen the stripes move with it.

That's to show you the topography of the body.

And now, if the person's sitting here, let's say the wine glass really interests you, by the way, I would've liked to have had a long stem, but this is what the hotel had available.

So this is what I've got.

I also borrowed the bottle of wine.

It's a very good smelling Cabernet, but this is your town lush, just sitting here.

And from this you can do a sketch, catching whatever is of interest to you.

If the wine particularly interests you, then make it brighter.

If the hat and the hair interests you, make them brighter.

You wanna make what caught your eye, really catch your eye.

And of course, so this glass, unfortunately my hand covers a lot of it.

I might do another one where I've got it on the other side.

And you can see the glass, but about the hand.

Hands are one of the things that scare people.

I've made a big issue out of on the size you're working on.

You don't need to include the hand, it's simply, it's either a glove, you can do a glove or I actually have to put the bottle down for a minute.

Oh dear, I have to put the bottle down.

This is my one geometric shape on a human.

This is a triangle.

And those are sausages.

Don't think of it as a hand.

It will intimidate you.

Think of it as a triangle.

It's just a triangle.

Look how little it is in proportion to the whole body.

Don't let it scare you.

So triangle, sausages, if you see them, that's all they are.

Now, if I pick this up, what would happen if I put it over here?

I suspect you can stop this.

If you're going to use me as a model to practice on, I suspect you can stop it at any pose and get multiple poses.

Since the glass is bigger than my hand, this is a little awkward, but it's a fun pose.

And you can have somebody in the family pose for you, or a friend, and then you can pose for them.

That should be a lot of fun.

And it would also be fun to dress it up a little bit while you're doing it.

Why not?

Now, if you don't get the slouch and the big belly because you're trying to be nice, forget it.

Reality is much more fun.

Trying to make somebody pretty?

No.

By the way, that's what ended John Singer Sargent's career in Europe.

He was painting people, probably the top portrait painter in all of London and Paris.

But he got fed up with the sitters who constantly wanted the portraits changed to the equivalent of using a soft lens on a camera so they looked better.

And he did get tired of that.

Now I'm gonna move a bit more.

By the way, one of the very best poses, one of the very best, and you don't even think of it, is from the rear.

I can do this so easily.

From the rear, you still have a human, it works.

What's the person doing?

And when you're trying to start learning to try to do people do a few from the rear, we don't think of that.

It is much, much, much easier.

Now if, well, let's do it.

If I'm leaning like this and using the table a little bit hard because of the chair's gonna scroll around.

If I'm doing this, you've got to include the table.

You have to.

It's a prop.

I'd fall down if the table weren't holding up my weight.

I'd fall down if the chair weren't here.

So you really, really have to be sure that you include these props.

And we're not really totally done yet, because I wanna do one more for you.

So we're gonna take an itsy bitsy little break while I get the next one ready.

I usually do these for workshops, but I hold a pose for 25 minutes so that people can sketch it.

But I'm going to get a slightly different outfit.

Hi again.

This is my second outfit for sketching people.

It looks a little demure, now, let me tell you how this happened.

I was sketching a bench in Sedona, Arizona.

It was a really neat bench.

I meant to sketch the bench when this lady appeared, walked over to the bench, slumped into it, and basically held still.

She was exhausted from shopping.

She didn't know anybody was looking, and so she did what we're not supposed to do.

She sat, let me get it as much as I can.

She was wearing white bobby socks.

I don't happen to have any with me.

Her legs were sticking out like this.

She was sitting like this.

I mean, you're not supposed to do this.

And then... She was afraid somebody would take her stuff.

So she was holding on for dear life.

And she also had a hat on.

I mean, some people wear hats.

I could never get myself together enough to do it.

But this has turned out to be a good hat to travel with.

And we put it together.

She was wearing a hat.

And when she had draped herself over the chair, hanging onto her stuff for dear life, I couldn't resist.

I had to sketch anybody who looked like this, A big old leg sticking out.

So this was basically the pose.

That's how this came about.

She was wearing a skirt.

Her legs were sticking out.

It couldn't have been worse, but there she was.

And so of course I had to sketch her.

If you have your stuff with you and somebody does something like this, you can have the fun of catching it.

And they probably, if they're really tired, they'll never know you were there.

So this basically has been a keeper.

I do this in every workshop.

I know it looks horrible.

I think it's funny.

And it took me quite a while to accept the fact that you really ought to put this in film so that people can enjoy it.

Because my workshop people sure do.

But sort of a variation on this.

This is gonna get into what you see in real real life, not with a purse like this and not with a skirt like that.

But the person, your person that you wanna sketch, is not gonna hold stock still.

So make sure you get a little bit of face, not much, but I'm going to do what you really see in reality.

Now, if I were doing this in a class, I would hold this longer between movements, but you're going to have a person who, for the most part, holds still, for the most part.

And so you watch to see what parts are going to hold still and what parts are going to move.

You get the parts that hold still, you can always come back to them.

The person usually doesn't move all over.

But the parts that move, you watch to see what they come back to.

Because they'll come back to the same thing again and again and again.

So if I'm reading a book and drinking a glass of wine, so I come here and then he put that down and looked around for a minute or two, notice parts of my body do not move.

I'm very content to be here.

This is really typical of what you're gonna see.

And then I get bored with that and go back and read the book.

This pose has continued.

And then maybe just look off into space while I'm thinking about it .

And then move back to reading the book.

Notice that each time I've come back to the same pose.

So the part that moves you get when it's in the pose you want.

Say you wanted the wine glass, that was the pose you wanted.

Then wait for that to recur.

Because as long as I have wine in the glass, if I'm paying for it, I'm not gonna leave it behind.

And then I might do something else for a few minutes and then come back and read the book.

Students are terrified of having the figure move.

Oh, but they move.

Yeah.

Watch how little they move.

Not that much.

Really, not that much.

You hear a noise, you look over there and it's nothing.

And you come back and read the book.

You decide you need another sip of wine.

Incidentally, a really good place to get very good models is a life drawing class in your town.

It's not a class.

There's a person in charge who's called, usually called a monitor.

That person's job is to open the room, make sure the model shows up, sit in for the model.

If it's a nude class, the monitor does not undress.

The monitor stays dressed, but they do model so that the people who've come have someone.

And then at the end, the monitor pays the model, locks the place up, makes sure everybody is gone.

The poses usually start with short warmup poses.

Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, and then a 25.

The session is usually two and a half hours long.

The price currently is $15 for two and a half hours of a really good model.

That's fantastic.

And the people who attend know all different amounts of what they're doing, from knowing nothing, and they're very welcoming, to being very good professional artists who like to use live models, to people who are trying a new medium.

Such as a couple of guys were trying Chinese brush painting one day when I was in one of these groups.

Another time it was charcoal.

And by the way, with your pen, you can outdo the charcoal people about four to one.

You can move around and do different poses while they get one because you're moving the line with water.

It's extremely fast.

Now, have you noticed, I've come back to this again and again.

This is what happens on the street.

Somebody eating in a restaurant, when they first sit down, they move around a bit, then they get into a set pose, and now you have a model.

And then they do things like this.

And then they, if they're reading a book, they go back and read a book.

If they're talking to a friend, their gestures will be the same over and over, and they'll repeat.

If they ordered wine, they're gonna drink it.

Great place to get models.

So you've seen a few.

I'll show you a couple sketches just for the fun before I leave.

This is one that wasn't finished.

This is where they start.

Now, I've been doing this a long time, so I'm pretty good at it.

I do a lot of jazz bands.

They're fun because they hold an instrument in a very set way.

This is at a young drummer.

Notice the flipping because you can't get her hands.

They go fast.

This is simply a guitar player, the hands, this one's moving.

Just to get that feeling.

A very young sax player, and one of my favorites, Doug Tidaback with the trombone because he moves all over.

Notice the legs, they go everywhere.

The horn goes everywhere.

These people are fun to do.

So people are just an absolute delight.

I hope you've enjoyed this and happy sketching.

(upbeat music) Want to learn more about the wonderful world of pocket sketching?

Then visit my website at pocketsketching.com.

We have so much there for you to explore, including free tips and training videos, the pocket sketching supplies, photo galleries, and how to access additional training.

All this and more is available at pocketsketching.com.

Learn enough to play for a lifetime.

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