Sketchbook: Quick portraits from the hospital

Updated on 12 March 2017 (Harvard referencing).

8 September 2016. While staying in the hospital I had one or two opportunities to sit down outside the main entrance and see whether I would be able to produce something I would call “lightning portraits”. A hospital is not the best of places to go and stare at peoples’ faces in order to draw them, so I decided that I would look at a person for a second at most – after which their sixth sense makes them, invariably, turn their heads to find out why they feel uncomfortable – and then draw the imprint on my mind. Since this method does not carry a lot of detail, I filled a page in my sketchbook with a number of quite small portraits. This is the evil result (Fig. 1):

Figure 1. People waiting near the hospital entrance, quick ink pen portraits

In our room I took an opportunity to catch my husband lying on my bed, reading a magazine, and my son staring at our laptop while checking the weather (Fig.2 ).

Figure 2

And finally some people I found in magazines, two famous and two from adverts, in another test to see whether I would be able to capture a likeness and something of a person’s personality in very quick sketches taking between 20 seconds and 2 to 3 minutes (Fig. 3-6):

Figure 3. Sigmar Gabriel, German Vice Chancellor, 2 minute sketch, pencil

Figure 4. Hillary Clinton, holding newborn grandchild for campaigning purposes, 3 minute sketch, three different ink pens

Figure 5. Person miming well-off private jet passenger, from glossy Lufthansa magazine, 20 second sketch, pencil

Figure 6. Fisherman from Oman, posing on boat, from Lufthansa magazine, 30 second sketch

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