Q: I’ve recently taken up sketching and practise whenever I can, including in coffee shops and parks. I sometimes sketch fellow cafe patrons and picnickers. Should I ask their permission and then show them my finished sketch?

C.G., McMahons Point, NSW

A: My wife is an artist and she sketches people all the time. She can’t help herself: if she sees an interesting face in a public place, she feels compelled to draw that face in her notebook or on the back of a napkin or on a paper tablecloth in a restaurant – or, one time, on an extra-crisp linen tablecloth that she thought was paper; then we had to pay and get out very fast. And she never asks permission because she knows it would kill the magic moment. If the person said no, then she’d have to draw them sneakily, under a table, which isn’t conducive to accurate line-work. And if they said yes, they’d get self-conscious and lose their natural facial expression and she’d get self-conscious and lose her natural sketching looseness and then they’d want to see the sketch afterwards and say, “Oh ... right ... interesting ...” and everyone would go away feeling rotten.

So there’s no need to ask and no need to show. In fact, secretly observing humans in public is the fuel of every artist, whether you’re a writer eavesdropping on a juicy conversation, an actor studying human behaviour for a role, or a sculptor getting inspired by the fantastical, amorphous blobby forms waiting in the queue at an airport McDonald’s.

My wife’s advice? Feel free to sketch anyone, but keep it low-key and respectful. Don’t stare at the person, don’t get too close, don’t rest an easel on their foot. And don’t rip up your drawing in front of them and yell, “Hideous!”

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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