Monday, July 1, 2013

Sketching People in Perpetual Motion

- Now you go and find interesting people and sketch them, while they are doing something, - said Marc Taro.

Umm... Is it possible to find an interesting person in the middle of a sunny Sunday at Tam-Tams? I dunno... Actually, it's much harder to find a plane and normal person. Really, I think that our company of sketchers - running around and hastily drawing candid portraits of strangers - was the least remarkable one.


 People in weird outfits, people selling strange and unusual stuff, people drumming, dancing, doing bizarre physical exercises, eating, smoking pot, climbing the monument of an Angel, taking pictures...  The whole place was buzzing and moving in the rhythm of bongos.

We were very lucky to become a test group for Mark's workshop that he was preparing for Barcelona symposium. Sketching moving people is a real challenge and this is one of those exercise that you have a tendency to postpone and forget to do: because it's that challenging. So I was very happy and grateful for this opportunity to finally force myself to jump some fences in my subconsciousness.



The good thing about sketching in a crazy crowd - nobody's noticing you. And the drumming somehow put you into a hypnotic rhythm - the same way that people at the galleys were rowing, non-stop and without a moment to think about what you do. The bad thing - it quickly drives you mad.

 

I was getting overwhelmed by shapes and colors and noise and smells of pot.Food truck sandwich was quickly digested and gone and I was struggling to share the water bottle with my watercolors. The sun was scorching and more and more new people arrived to the scene. An introvert in me was dying in horrible convulsions.

I was missing the early morning, when we just arrived. It was so calm and clear and the air was clean, and there was no police around, only the fellow sketchers and a few early bird tourists.



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