Even Sketchwaiting Needs Practice

9/8/23 Safeway pharmacy line

9/2/23 Cloud City Coffee

A sketcher had lamented online about not having enough time to sketch. She was asking for advice from other sketchers who seemed prolific, especially those who filled brief, idle moments with what I call “sketchwaiting.” The experienced sketchers chimed in about the fun of filling otherwise dead time with sketching. Much of the advice was about having simple sketch materials with you at all times so that you can take advantage of any sketching opportunity. Wherever you are and with whatever time you have, sketch whatever you see  – that was the common advice. Just jump in and do it.

9/5/23 Cloud City Coffee

9/7/23 Green Lake neighborhood

10/3/23 Green Lake neighborhood

I can easily “just jump in and do it” now, but sketchwaiting did not always come as easily. It takes quite a bit of time of regular, on-location practice before sketchwaiting comes as second nature. If you have very little sketching experience, or even if you have some but most of your practice has come from using photo references, sketchwaiting is much harder. The “whatever you see” is huge and overwhelming (even in a place like a doctor’s waiting room) – how do you choose what to draw? By the time the subject is selected, likely your name has been called for your appointment, and the opportunity is lost.

9/19/23 Green Lake Village

9/20/23 Thornton Place Plaza

I have talked a lot on this blog about the importance of learning to draw from life, not just practicing from photos, and I think this is one more reason. People who sketch from life are already used to distilling the huge “whatever” they see into a sketch, which makes them better prepared even if they have only a few minutes. And the more one practices regularly, the easier it becomes to practice regularly.

9/19/23 Russian Veterans Monument, Orthodox Brotherly Cemetery, Seattle
(I typically wouldn't use color while sketchwaiting, but in this case,
I knew I had an hour to happily kill. Most sketchwaiting opportunities are much shorter.)

Reviving Time

 

11/14/22

The PC folder where I store “sketchwaiting” sketches until I put them in a blog post was starting to bulge, so it’s time for a catch-up. It’s fun to see the passage of time – some of these go back more than six months – through the colors of my ever-changing Uglybooks.

Recently in a Facebook group that is not related to sketching, someone showed some doodles he was drawing to “kill time” while waiting for takeout food. Some may think of this activity as killing time, but I think of sketchwaiting as reviving otherwise dead time.

Urban sketchers who sketchwait are probably the only people in medical or dental waiting rooms who are a bit disappointed when they are called for their appointments; it means they can’t finish the sketch they surely started while sitting there.

12/3/22

1/2/23

My sketchwaiting tends to happen more while I’m waiting for takeout food or waiting to meet others. Sometimes I deliberately arrive a few minutes early to appointments so that I’ll have more sketchwaiting time.

3/1/23

3/23/23

While sketchwaiting, there’s always a little tension because you don’t know if you have a minute or 15 or 30. Enjoying that tension, I always sketch as if I have only a minute or two to wait. Any time on top of that is just frosting on the cake.

4/8/23

4/10/23

As you might guess, I appreciate the spontaneity that is integral to sketchwaiting. There’s no time to think about composition or color or good lighting. Just hit the page and run with it.

5/3/23

5/6/23

If a sketch is (inevitably) unfinished when the waiting ends, I don’t mind, nor do I feel frustrated. The abrupt end is then built into the sketch – a record of the few moments that were not wasted or “killed” but brought to life.

5/9/23

6/2/23

6/20/23

Spring and Summer Sketchwaiting

 

4/29/22 a parking lot

I keep a folder of little sketches I’ve made while waiting for someone who’s meeting me or for other things to happen. When a few have accumulated, I post the sketches together. I looked in my sketchwaiting folder the other day, and I realized I still had images in there from spring! A sketchwaiting catch-up is long overdue.

Made in a variety of places and under various circumstances, their only consistent theme is waiting. Most sketches took five minutes or less, but a few took quite a bit longer (the two with umbrella’d tables and the potted plant). When sketchwaiting, I tend to keep going with a single sketch, filling whatever time is available with more details. Waiting in this way is always enjoyable and never annoying, and the result was 10 sketches I otherwise wouldn’t have made. An added benefit is that I’m usually forced to stay within a limited area, which challenges me to find something to sketch that I might not otherwise consider.

6/30/22 Thornton Place

If my time was pleasantly occupied, does it even count as waiting? Maybe sketchwaiting is just the thing that happens in a spot of time between two other spots of time.

5/19/22 Costco

7/1/22 Volunteer Park

7/19/22 University Village

7/20/22 Green Lake

8/9/22 McMenamins Anderson School light fixture

8/24/22 Green Lake

8/30/22 Gas Works Park

9/2/22 Arboretum

9/14/22 Green Lake (This sketch was the last page of my first filled 
Uglybook since I began using them in late July. The colored pages motivate
me to keep filling 'em up!)

No Difference

3/5/25 Neighbors Barbershop, Wedgwood

8/25/25 Green Lake

Whenever I make sketches that were made while waiting but have no other stories to tell about them, I file the scans in a folder labeled “sketchwaiting.” They are waiting for me to think of something new to say about sketchwaiting so that I can blog about them. I looked in the folder the other day and realized I had a sketch in there from March! I obviously hadn’t thought of anything new to say.

10/16/25 Whole Foods, Roosevelt neighborhood

10/19/25 Volunteer Park

Then it occurred to me that for a lifestyle sketcher like me, there’s not much difference between sketchwaiting and any other type of sketching. Sketches happen spontaneously, whether I’m walking, shopping, or waiting for a friend. No wonder I have nothing new to say.

11/11/25 Green Lake

Sketchwaiting is the embodiment of what Nishant Jain provocatively asks: What if every time we felt like pulling out our phone, we pulled out a sketchbook instead? What if, indeed.

11/15/25 Rosellini's Bakery, Ballard neighborhood

Sketchwaiting

 

3/21/24 Waiting for a friend at Crown Hill Metro Market 

1/17/24 Waiting outside Toast Mi, Green Lake

Before I get too far behind, I’d better catch up on my sketchwaiting from the past few months. As usual, there’s nothing special here; these snippets simply reflect a few minutes (or quite a few minutes) that would otherwise have gone to waste. In most cases, I knew approximately how much time I’d have to wait, so I could adjust my speed or level of detail accordingly. If it’s a “planned” wait (arriving early with the intention of sketching), like the spread at the top of the post, does it really count as sketchwaiting? I say it does because I’m still not in full control of when I have to stop.

1/17/24 Doctor's waiting room

1/19/24 Jet City Pizza pizza maker with great curls

3/9/24 Capitol Hill

3/22/24 Northgate business park parking lot

Fall Sketchwaiting

 

9/24/22 a birthday brunch at The Maple

My favorite sketchwaiting opportunity from the past couple months happened in late September at a friend’s birthday brunch (at left). When I arrived at the restaurant, I realized that I had left the card that I had made for her sitting on my desk. The others had not yet arrived, so I made a quick sketch in my Uglybook. When we all began handing cards and gifts across the table, I tore the page out and presented it to her.

Despite having appointments, we had to wait quite a while for our Pfizer boosters and flu shots at the pharmacy, which gave me time to sketch others waiting for their boosters. Ironically, we were not required to wait 15 minutes afterwards. I was disappointed. I liked the ritual of sketchwaiting after each of my COVID vaccines. When the vaccine first came out, sketchers around the world showed sketches they had made in waiting areas, and it was a cool shared ritual. Now it’s apparently ho-hum to most and not worth documenting. Thinking about people I had connections with who died of COVID-19, I still appreciate the privilege of being vaccinated.

9/29/22 Others waiting for their vaccines at Bartell.

9/21/11 Green Lake neighborhood

10/27/22 Queued at the pharmacy.

11/11/22 Green Lake

Leisurely Sketchwaiting

 

7/29/24 Capitol Hill neighborhood

A favor to a friend gave me a leisurely sketchwaiting opportunity in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where I rarely make time to simply wander. Walking the mile or so between the main business area on 15^th Avenue East and Volunteer Park took me past many classic Seattle Craftsman bungalows and old trees. Eventually I ended up at Caffe Ladro, where I enjoyed a relaxing Cortado and coffee cake.

Capitol Hill Caffe Ladro

The older sketches below were more of the usual sketchwaiting type – just filling moments while waiting for someone or something to happen. With a sketchbook in hand, a minute is as good as two hours.

5/2/24 Meridian Park

7/9/24 Green Lake

5/8/24 Aegis Living, Maple Leaf