Travelling to India - sketches at the airport

This summer after being away for over three years I visited India, my home country. On the day I left for India I started a sketch book in order to have a pictorial record of my travel to, and in India. In this series of postings I shall share some of those sketches and also attempt a word portrait of my experience. I have always enjoyed sketching with pen and ink. I find the permanence of this medium a challenge, but then I enjoy the spontaneity that the medium affords. Needless to say, in my sketches, you will find that not all strokes of the pen are “correct” or “in place”. My goal is to just capture the fleeting moment as best as I can.
People in public places make excellent subjects for quick sketches. At an airport you find an assortment of people from different walks of life. I saw a woman with a head full of curls (naturally curly or did she use curler irons?) sitting next to a man with a full beard. They were both leaning back to chat with another couple seated behind them. I wondered if the man and woman were partnered. Their interaction had an air of familiarity that suggested that they were together. There was a serious looking guy peering into his laptop– a sight that we have become all too familiar in this digital age. Could be a student working on his thesis, or could be a businessman working on his accounts. There was an elderly man with a bunch of papers in his lap – clearly a professor trying to catch up on grading papers. A small kid was running around between bouts of cartwheeling – she just livened up the atmosphere, people who were until then cursing flight delays and serpentine airport security lines were breaking into smiles…..The list of potential subjects for a sketch as you wait to board a plane is endless.
The sketch of the man with the laptop was rendered using charcoal pencil while the other two were done in ink and then shaded using charcoal and graphite pencils.