I watch people while waiting. Many places I wait, I notice literally everyone around me is staring at a smartphone. I may look at my phone a little bit, but I’d rather use wait time to sketch. Here are a collection of sketches I’ve done over the summer while waiting on my teenager. The first one is a prize machine at the dentist. You sit still, you get tokens to get a prize. It’s an interesting shape and brightly colored, so I had to sketch it. The next sketch is while sitting in the car waiting for my daughter to finish her music lesson. A large black party bus was pulled up to the church for a wedding party that was letting out. I had never sketched that before, so went ahead as people were filing out and boarding the bus.
While taking the youth group to a local puzzle room event, I didn’t do the room, but went outside for fresh air instead. The puzzle room was located in an old house, which had interesting architecture, so I sat on the grass by a busy street and sketched the house. I liked the little sign on the left as well.
Finally, just a few days ago, I waiting during an appointment. The office building parking lot sits right near a train track, so I sat in the shade of a tree and sketched my surroundings. No trains came by, but I enjoyed the plane traffic overhead and worked on the challenging one-point perspective of the train tracks. I find sketching calming and relaxing and it was a beautiful day to be outside. When people find it challenging to find time to draw, I think we need to just have our books at the ready. There are always interesting things to sketch–in coffee shops, restaurants, at the doctor or dentist, train station, airport, and a myriad of other places where we find ourselves waiting. I find it opens my mind to see things I don’t normally take the time to look at, things most people pass on by. Happy sketching!
