Suggesting People and Details Instead of Filling Them In

A street scene is full of people, bikes, signs and leaves, and many beginners' first instinct is to neatly fill in every single element. That doesn't just cost you time you don't have out on location, it also makes the sketch stiff: a picture in which everything is equally detailed looks oddly lifeless. This lesson shows you how to bring more movement and life into your picture with a few strokes than you ever could with hours of filling in.

People as simple shapes

A person seen at a distance needs no facial features, no fingernails, no shoelaces. Reduce a figure to three or four shapes: a small oval for the head, a wedge-shaped area for the torso, two or three strokes for the legs. Deliberately leave the face blank – a dot or nothing at all is enough, the viewer's eye automatically fills in the rest as soon as the head and body read correctly. A helpful trick for proportion: standing people at roughly the same distance have their heads at almost the same height as your own eyes, regardless of how far away from you they're standing. This imagined line at eye level, which you already know from the perspective lesson, therefore helps you twice over: it organises not just buildings but also people in the picture.

Movement comes almost entirely from the position of the legs, not from details. Two parallel, straight strokes read as a standing person; one leg shifted slightly forward and the other back instantly creates the impression of walking; crossed legs make someone look like they're leaning while standing. Take a moment to observe how the person is actually standing or moving before you put down the stroke, and feel free to exaggerate the leg position a little – small sketches need clear, slightly overstated signals to work.

Details only where you want the eye to go

Not every window needs glazing bars, not every brick its own line, not every leaf a brushstroke. Details are accents, not an obligation, and they belong only where you want the viewer's eye to land – usually a single focal area, such as a café table in the foreground or a figure in the middle of the picture. Everything outside that focus may and should stay rougher. Deliberately leave shapes open at the edges of your sketch: a façade that runs out into pure colour without an outline towards the outside, or a tree whose crown simply disappears into the white of the paper at the edge of the picture, keeps the eye in the centre of the image instead of letting it wander off to the border. Letting things run out like this isn't a sign of being unfinished, it's a deliberate way of directing attention.

Cars, bikes, signs and trees in a few strokes

A parked car basically needs nothing more than a rounded box, two dark ellipses for the wheels and a single light stroke for the reflection on the paintwork. A bike becomes two circles and a few straight lines in between – suggested, not constructed. A street sign is a small coloured rectangle or circle on a thin vertical stroke; often the colour alone is enough to make it recognisable as a sign. You don't paint trees leaf by leaf but as a loose, cloud-like mass with a few darker dabs for the shadow areas and one or two visible branches or the trunk below. The same principle applies in all four cases: the eye recognises an object from just a few typical characteristics, you don't have to rebuild it.

The squint test for details

The squint test you know for checking values helps here too. Squint at your sketch and see whether a single area clearly stands out as the sharpest, most detailed one, or whether several spots compete equally for attention. If everything looks equally sharp, you've spread too many details around and should pull some of them back, or at least not develop them further. Use the test before you paint, on the real subject too: it shows you which area of the scene actually deserves the most attention, and where you can happily simplify generously.

Exercise

Find a street scene with at least three people and a vehicle or bike. First sketch the people as simple shapes without faces, choosing a different leg position for each figure. Then decide on a single focal area, for example the nearest person or the vehicle, and work in only one or two additional details there. Deliberately keep everything else in the sketch rougher, with edges running out towards the border of the picture. Give yourself 15 minutes and finish with the squint test: does your focal area clearly stand out?

Key points

People don't need faces; their movement comes from the position of the legs. Details are accents for a single focal area, not an obligation for the whole sketch. The squint test shows you whether your picture has a clear hierarchy or whether everything is fighting equally for attention.