Sketching for MK Lit Fest

Sketch of the MK Lit Fest launch event for the MinK zine.

Live Event Sketching 

In September I was very pleased to take on an assignment for our local literary festival (now in its 2nd year). The MK Lit Fest organisers had seen an artist in residence at another literary event and approached me due to seeing my own sketches of last year's MK Lit Fest event on Instagram.

Sketching at an event is a fun an interesting mix of observational drawing and listening to the speakers. There are many ways to go about this but the one I use is to sketch 'live' on location, adding notes while I work or after the talk. I also take colour notes as I like to add watercolour washes to my sketches.

Another way to work might be to use the sketches as the basis of a more finished looking piece, possibly stringing together a theme or bullet points from the presentations. At this event we went with the immediacy of the loose sketching style which I use for urban sketching. My first sketches took in the launch event, including contributors to the MinK zine, followed by the first star guest. My notes are a mixture of comments from the speakers and background information which I researched when I got home.

VG Lee reading at MK Lit Fest

Sharing on Social Media

When the pictures of my drawings went up on social media, we also tagged in the various writers and local arts organisations. My literary festival sketches seem to have gone down particularly well with the writers from the Polari Literary Salon, based in London, who were delighted to find out that they'd been sketched whilst they were on stage. Other sketchers may have gone for a more flamboyant approach and could have made sketching more of a performance piece but my style is to sit quietly in a corner and to do candid observational sketching.

The organisers told me that posts on Facebook seemed to encourage more clicks and posts on Twitter seemed to generate more discussion. Overall the experience seems to have been a great success for both myself and the organisers, so I'd consider doing this again for another event.

Live Sketching Tips

For anyone looking for tips on practising this style of reportage, I'd recommend investing in a couple of sketchbooks, some pens or brushes that you feel comfortable drawing quickly with, a portable set of pan watercolours, watercolour pencils or gouache colours. Find a comfortable place to stand or sit while you people-watch, if you perch quietly in one place then people and animals tend to feel more comfortable than if you fidget or announce your presence. If you're uncomfortable with drawing people then start practising by drawing the environment and take some life drawing classes to improve the way you draw figures.

Also look at examples of urban sketching on websites. There are local sketch groups in Bedford and Northampton if you want to embrace the social side of sketching and a Facebook group for sketchers like myself in Milton Keynes.

To see more of  my MK Lit Fest sketches, please take a look at my Instagram account @srfirehorseart.

Note: an earlier version of this article appeared on LinkedIn.