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Urban Sketching Essentials: Drawing People and Crowds Made Simple

Are you a beginning or even seasoned sketcher that’s intimidated by the thought of adding people to your drawing?You’ve come to the right class!People are th...
4.8
4.8/5
(416 reviews)
6,451 students
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9.0

Classbaze Grade®

7.5

Freshness

10.0

Popularity

9.0

Material

Platform: Skillshare
Video: 1h 33m
Language: English
Next start: On Demand

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Classbaze Rating

Classbaze Grade®

9.0 / 10

CourseMarks Score® helps students to find the best classes. We aggregate 18 factors, including freshness, student feedback and content diversity.

Freshness

7.5 / 10
This course was last updated on 10/2019.

Course content can become outdated quite quickly. After analysing 71,530 courses, we found that the highest rated courses are updated every year. If a course has not been updated for more than 2 years, you should carefully evaluate the course before enrolling.

Popularity

10.0 / 10
We analyzed factors such as the rating (4.8/5) and the ratio between the number of reviews and the number of students, which is a great signal of student commitment.

New courses are hard to evaluate because there are no or just a few student ratings, but Student Feedback Score helps you find great courses even with fewer reviews.

Material

9.0 / 10
Video Score: 7.8 / 10
The course includes 1h 33m video content. Courses with more videos usually have a higher average rating. We have found that the sweet spot is 16 hours of video, which is long enough to teach a topic comprehensively, but not overwhelming. Courses over 16 hours of video gets the maximum score.
The average video length is 1 hours 13 minutes of 35 Urban Sketching courses on Skillshare.
Detail Score: 9.3 / 10

The top online course contains a detailed description of the course, what you will learn and also a detailed description about the instructor.

Extra Content Score: 10.0 / 10

Tests, exercises, articles and other resources help students to better understand and deepen their understanding of the topic.

This course contains:

0 article.
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0 tests or quizzes.

In this page

About the course

Are you a beginning or even seasoned sketcher that’s intimidated by the thought of adding people to your drawing?  You’ve come to the right class!  People are the life of the city, and drawing them into your urban sketches gives your drawing movement, character and energy.  This simple technique will have you drawing believable people and crowds in almost no time.  You’ll learn:

  • Why I start urban sketches by drawing people first
  • An easy, step-by-step method for building a human figure in a sketch
  • A simple way to remember correct human figure proportions
  • How to use an eye-level line as the foundation of any sketch
  • Using people to create the illusion of depth on the page
  • Using darks and color to bring the scene to life

This is a class for all skill levels.  I’ve taught this technique to everyone from professional illustrators to adults who hadn’t drawn since the age of six.  All enjoyed and learned from it, and so will you.  By the end of the class you’ll be sketching people and crowds for the pure fun of it, and ready to learn more in the next class in the series. Have fun!

What can you learn from this course?

Your project for this class is to create a loose, lively sketch of a group of seven to ten people (or more!) using the easy, step-by-step approach you learned in this class.  Your sketch can be drawn by watching people on location, from a photo, an internet image or from your imagination. Remember to relax and enjoy the process—this is a judgement-free zone.

I suggest you draw on a piece of letter-sized white bond paper if you want a black and white drawing.  If you want to add watercolor washes as I did, use 140 lb. cold pressed watercolor paper, sized about 9 inches by 12 inches.  Use a fine line pen with waterproof ink such as the humble Uni-ball EYE, a MICRON or PITT Artist Pen (Fine), along with a thicker black pen to quickly cover dark areas.  For this, I like the PITT Artist Brush Pen, because the ink is waterproof and permanent.  Take it step-by-step:

  1. Start by drawing a horizontal eye-level line,
  2. Build the first figure with the head (a simple oval) on the eye-level line—then add trunk, then legs, then arms, and then details.
  3. Repeat the process to create more figures. Make sure all heads are on the eye level line, but vary the size and level of detail in the figures—more detail in the larger (closer) figures, less detail in the smaller (more distant) figures.  This trick will immediately give your sketch the illusion of depth!
  4. If you like, add some very simplified context—a lightly sketched rectangle or two for background buildings, a statue (which is just another person, right?), a streetlight or other elements. Add some darks for contrast and a little color as demonstrated during the class, and you’re done!
  5. Post your finished sketch to the gallery. If you decide to share your work on Instagram, you may tag me using my Instagram handle @jrsketchbook.

What you need to start the course?

There is no requirement, anyone can start this course.

Who is this course is made for?

Anybody can take this course, as it is suitable for all levels.

Are there coupons or discounts for Urban Sketching Essentials: Drawing People and Crowds Made Simple ? What is the current price?

You can enrol in this course with a Skillshare subscription that costs $8/month, but you start with a FREE 7-day trial. You can also enrol in thousands of courses on a variety of topics with your subscription, including several Urban Sketching courses.

Will I be refunded if I'm not satisfied with the Urban Sketching Essentials: Drawing People and Crowds Made Simple course?

There is no money-back guarantee with Skillshare, but you can start with a free one-week trial to learn without risk. With the subscription, you can download classes to your tablet or phone using the Skillshare app.

Are there any financial aid for this course?

At the moment we couldn't find any available scholarship forUrban Sketching Essentials: Drawing People and Crowds Made Simple, but you can access more than 30 thousand classes for $8/month on Skillshare, including this one!

Who will teach this course? Can I trust James Richards?

James Richards has created 3 courses that got 685 reviews which are generally positive. James Richards has taught 13,757 students and received a 4.8 average review out of 685 reviews. Depending on the information available, we think that James Richards is an instructor that you can trust.
Author, Urban Sketcher, Travel Artist, Designer
Author, Urban Sketcher, Travel Artist, Designer
Browse all courses by on Classbaze.

9.0

Classbaze Grade®

7.5

Freshness

10.0

Popularity

9.0

Material

Platform: Skillshare
Video: 1h 33m
Language: English
Next start: On Demand

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