Little Things Mean a Lot

I visited Hong Kong’s Wong Tai Sing shopping mall back on Monday 15^th April 2013 to meet Daphne for lunch, and after touring the shops I could not find an interesting scene or area that I felt worthwhile to sketch. I wanted to make an attempt at sketching something, anything, but just could not bring myself to frame an interesting view. However on my way to the MTR station the busy traffic on the moving escalators stood out as a challenge that I may want to try.

But where should I begin my sketch? There is movement everywhere, especially the people on the escalators; moving away from me they diminish in size as they advance to the top of the escalator. And the perspective of the composition with its multiple vanishing and station points made the scene complex and involved.

The answer to me was to just simply sketched the overlapping image of the people on the escalators, then fill in the rest of the architecture to complete the overall composition, while making sure that I respect the fore-ground and the back-ground of the image. It began as a complex sketching exercise, but the little things throughout the composition made sketching the composition interesting and worthwhile.