Drawing the Friendly Skies

As every artist should, I often have a sketchbook handy for those idle moments that pop up now and then quite unpredictably. It is tough to pinpoint when inspiration will strike, or when one might have a surge of boredom. Nothing quite fills these voids better than having a sketchbook to launch yourself into another time or place, or sometimes just to document the time and place in which you find yourself. It is the latter of these two that I have been remiss in sharing with you. You’ve seen some of my imaginary doodles, but sketches from real life have been elusive on this blog.

I am about to take off on a trip, and to pass the time in airport waiting areas, there is nothing better than having your sketchbook by your side to draw the crazy characters that undoubtedly surround you at any given moment. There are folks of any shape or size, there are people with strange behavior, there’s a child acting out with an exasperated parent not doing anything about it, there’s the airport worker sweeping, there’s the elderly person being wheeled by in a wheelchair, and if you are looking, you may even see the casual celebrity walk by like Don King, Carlos Santana, or even Jerry O’Connell and Rebecca Romijn as I have.

So, today I am sharing with you a few airport doodles pulled from my sketchbooks. I’ll be adding to them this week, some of which may be worthy to share with you later. Sometimes you don’t get more than a moment to capture someone, so you have to be quick. And the real trick is to do it when they aren’t looking. You never want to get caught by your subject. They tend to not enjoy the scrutiny.

However, you have my permission to scrutinize the following doodles of regular folk all drawn from real life. Feel free to click on the image to see them larger.

Here are a few sketches of random people I've seen in airports.
Here are a few sketches of random people I’ve seen in airports.