How do i draw observational sketches of people?

by drawing them

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First you'll need to gather your materials.
You'll need something to draw with so get a pencil or pen.
And also something to draw on so get some paper or a sketchbook or some shit.

The trickiest part though is the people. You can find people in the wild around buildings and roads. There are also people inside buildings but people are very territorial and will get angry if you go into the wrong building without permission.

Now the observational sketching itself has two key components, observing and sketching.
Observing involves facing your eyes towards your subject (the person) and looking at them (make sure to have your eyes open when you do this)
Sketching involves making marks with your drawing implement to make a picture on the paper that looks like your subject.

To make marks, hold the pen(cil) in your hand with the pointy end towards the paper. Press the pointy end against the paper and move it along the paper to make a mark (a line in this case). The tricky part of this is using the right amount of pressure when applying your mark. If you press too lightly then you won't make a mark at all and if you press too strongly you'll just tear your fucking page in half or snap your pencil so be careful. There's a specific range of pressures you can use that will be able to make effective marks, if you press toward the lighter end of the range your mark will be lighter and thinner and if you press harder it will be darker and thicker. This is important to remember.

The trick to observational sketching is that you need to almost simultaneously observe and make marks on the page that resemble your observations.
A useful technique for this in the early stages of your sketch is drawing lines. You should draw lines where you see the edges of objects, creases and sharp changes in value (I'll explain value in a second).
cont.

>>3032815
A good technique for beginners is to observe the basic shape that the contour (edges) of the subject makes, and then drawing lines to make that shape on your page.
You should observe the angles of the edges and match those angles with your lines. Also you should try to match the proportion of the subject. Proportion is how the sizes of different things relate to each other.
So if you see something on the subject that is twice as big as another part of the subject, you should make sure your drawing depicts that part as being twice as big as the other part, same as the subject.

After you've got the basics down you could say that you've completed a "sketch", but if you want to take your sketch and turn it into a full drawing you can use the advanced art technique known as "rendering" (also known as shading to you fucking philistines)
When you render something, you add "value" to it and your sketch stops being completely worthless trash.
The value of a region is determined by how dark it appears, or more specifically how dense that area is with ink/lead/charcoal.
There are many different values from completely white (it's just the blank page) to completely dark (adding as much ink/lead/charcoal to an area as possible)
The goal of value is to make a part of your drawing appear to have the same brightness as that part in the subject.
cont.

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>>3032816
A useful technique for creating value is "hatching". This means you lightly make many close parallel lines in the area you want to make darker.
This tricks your brain into thinking it is one solid tone instead of a bunch of little lines.
You can make it darker or lighter depending on how hard you press or how close you draw your lines.
You can also use the side of your drawing implement (charcoal or pencil) to create wider yet lighter lines. These are pretty good for rendering.
There's also a variation of hatching called cross-hatching that looks like shit. Don't do it.
If you want to be a real fucking savage you can use your finger to smudge the shaded area to blend it to seem more like a solid tone or blend tones together to make a gradient but you get lead/charcoal all over your hands doing this so if you're gonna do that use a cloth or blending stick or something if you want to do this.

That all said, all your drawings are probably going to be really shit because drawing is hard and you need to practise it a lot.

>>3032755
>how do i X
practice

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>>3032755
Capture the overall mass first using the envelope
also, USE STRAIGHT LINES