Lunar New Year Urban Sketch - Vancouver Chinatown

Here's a couple of my urban sketches while out at the Chinese New Year Parade in Vancouver.

I started with some quick and rough shapes, and then started to draw/scribble in the lines. I like using a Sakura Micron Pen size 01 for my line work. I find that when I'm outdoors I need to work fast (Especially when I'm in a crowded area)! I tend to keep my lines a lot looser than when I'm working indoors from a photo.

Here's the view of where I was sitting. There were so many people moving around constantly, so I picked a few specific ones to refine while keeping the overall shape of the crowd pretty loose and unspecific.

Here's the final drawing - no time for ink washes on this one! No fancy plein air setup either. I had a clipboard, my sketchbook, a pencil, my fine liner, and a couple bulldog clips to hold things together.

Try drawing outdoors if you haven't already! It's really fun and you don't need a fancy setup when doing a drawing. Just your basic sketching materials and a hard surface to draw on if your sketchbook isn't already a hard covered one.