Jamie's Sketchbook

Jamie

Sketching obsessed.

One Week 100 People 2026

One Week, One Hundred People

Every year, -ish, I do this challenge. I love it. And every year, before I start, I get a bit stressed how hard people are to draw.

This is One Week 100 People — a challenge that runs annually in the Urban Sketchers community, where sketchers commit to drawing one hundred people in one week. It sounds challenging. It is, a little. But when you start, and something loosens up, and the faces start coming.

I always do better at faces than I think I will. Even the hilariously misshapen ones are somehow delightful. I don’t often get a genuine resemblance, but if it looks like a person at all, I’m happy with it. Once I get into it, I always feel that faces are fun, and why was I so resistant?

A little history

I first did this challenge in 2021. I’d never drawn people before — not once. I picked up a brush pen, found an episode of Edwardian Farm (a British documentary where living historians recreate life on an Edwardian farm, which is exactly as charming as it sounds), and started drawing. I didn’t get to 100, and that was fine. I loved these little gestures.

A page of loose, energetic black and white brush pen gesture drawings of figures at work, sketched from the TV documentary Edwardian Farm."
A page of loose, energetic black and white brush pen gesture drawings of figures at work, sketched from the TV documentary Edwardian Farm."

I skipped 2022 and 2023. Life happened. Or maybe I was too intimidated to begin.

In 2024 I came back with a Faber Castell dual markers portrait set and spent the week with Murdoch Mysteries, Oak Island, and Death in Paradise keeping me company. You can see the 2024 entry here.

A double page sketchbook spread of faces drawn in warm tones with Faber-Castell dual markers, sketched from the TV show Murdoch Mysteries. Faces are scattered loosely across the pages, alongside color swatches from the Portrait marker set and the handwritten title 'One Week 100 People.'
double page sketchbook spread of faces drawn in warm tones with Faber-Castell dual markers, sketched from the TV show The Curse of Oak Island. Faces are scattered loosely across the pages.

2025 was my favorite year so far — I experimented with materials, mostly using the Inktense Shade and Tone Mixed Media Set, and the full color pages are ones I’m genuinely proud of. You can see all of those pages in last year’s post.

A double page sketchbook spread of faces sketched from the TV show Murdoch Mysteries, drawn with the Derwent Inktense Shade and Tone Mixed Media set. The faces are arranged across the pages against a barely-there hexagon grid in the background. The palette is muted — skin tones, greys, and blacks with sanguine as the only accent color.
A double page sketchbook spread of faces sketched from the TV show Murdoch Mysteries, drawn with the Derwent Inktense Shade and Tone Mixed Media set. Faces are scattered loosely across the pages in a muted palette of skin tones, greys, and blacks with sanguine and pale blue the only accent color.

And this year?

This year’s faces will be coming from Stargate SG1, mostly. It’s what I’m streaming right now. I have my sketchbook taped up and ready — a grid of narrow green masking tape waiting to be filled with faces. This I plan to sketch in the business center of my gym and attempt to sketch people live. Quick gestures, people in motion, no time to overthink it.

Maybe that’s the best possible way to start. One hundred people. One week. Here we go.

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