Sketching in Airports

I usually work in the airport, and on the plane. Laptops and wi-fi devices mean that the six hours I spend getting from one office to another are not completely lost on travelling. It's the main reason for flying rather than driving in many cases, for me.

But there are also times when the laptop isn't allowed, or the timeframe is too small to do anything meaningful for the job. If my blackberry is caught up (e-mail viewed and answered) then I pull out a moleskine and a pen and draw some unsuspecting fellow travellers.

This first sketch was done in less than ten minutes, while standing awaiting my turn to board my flight home. I always have my smallest moleskine in my computer bag, and, if nothing else, I have a ballpoint pen.

Often people move, and I don't get to finish. I'm concentrating on faces, at the moment, trying to crack the code on the human head, expressions, age, and other things that make each of us so unique and fascinating to me. I bought an anatomy book recently, and I finally resumed life drawing sessions again last night - that's another post. This little sketch (just about life size, if you click on it) is more interesting, I think, because I could not finish, and I simply started another figure, to make the most of the time. These two men were actually not sitting near each other at all.

On the plane there is the time from the closing of the door to 10,000 feet, when "all portable electronic devices must be turned off and stowed." (I think I can recite the entire flight attendant litany from memory... "In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will deploy. Pull the mask toward you...") This was a simple drawing of the man in the front row, across the aisle from me. I liked the shape of his head, and the mere hints of face from this angle - eye cavity, eye brow, eye lashes, tip of nose.