While documenting my cohabitants, I realized that no matter how much time we spend with our friends or family, we never really notice the surrounding spaces that we occupy. I realized this when I sketched my cohabitants and non of my sketches focused on the background or surrounding and the question that popped up my mind was that why did backgrounds not matter much when we saw a person or any element that caught out eye?

Shown above are sketches of members of my family performing different activities. These were the initial sketches that I made. I used graphite pencils to do the same. The first image has multiple sketches of my mother that I made while we sitting across as table and have a discussion. The proportions and angles are not accurate as these were live sketches. I was sitting for almost an hour and these are the sketches I could get. In the other image I have my family members who I sketched from photographs as there was no one at home that day. Having a fixed frame like a photograph helps to establish better understanding while making a sketch as seen in the above image to the right. I was able to draw more details for these figures as I didn’t have to worry about the change in position of the person as I did while sketching figures in the first image.

While making performers unique to community I only made sketches using a graphite pencil as I was comfortable with the medium. However, I traced them with microns to get better line quality. Then sir suggested me to try a new medium directly so this time, I used brush strokes for these sketches.

Initially I struggled a lot with it. I could not establish perfect lines or composition but eventually I got the hang of it and could produce proportionate sketches. The background is however missing. Perhaps next time. I also tried to draw hands to capture their movement.

Altogether it was exciting for me and the people I was sketching to be in the process.