Hong Kong iPad artist Sketcherman captures street scenes so quickly his subjects don’t notice
With just a stylus and the Procreate app, Sketcherman builds multilayered, detailed snapshots of Hong Kong life, with his human subjects often unaware they’re being drawn
If you’re reading this on public transport, Rob Sketcherman would rather you put away your mobile phone and looked around you instead.
“I don’t want to sound preachy,” says the artist with a laugh. “But in Hong Kong, it’s only the tourists looking out of the windows. Every local is tied to their phone.”
For the past four years, Sketcherman (the 47-year-old’s real name is Robert Tan, but he only goes by his online moniker these days) has been scribbling down the sights and scenes of the city on his iPad with the group Urban Sketchers Hong Kong, which he credits with helping him to start noticing the details of his surroundings.
With just a stylus and the Procreate app, Sketcherman builds multilayered, closely detailed snapshots of Hong Kong life. Instead of posed studies, he prefers capturing candid moments, observed so skilfully that his human subjects often don’t notice he’s drawing them.
To illustrate this point, he lifts his iPad and begins to sketch a cigarette-puffing man with a blond beard sat close by on the table to his left. The man, chattering away to his companion, barely notices as Sketcherman’s gaze flicks to and fro and his stylus crisscrosses quickly over the screen. Within 30 seconds, a recognisable portrait is complete.
