Drawing people quickly for urban sketching

I often see fellow urban sketchers only draw the buildings or landscape and leave out the people in a sketch. I suppose the reason is, sometimes, that particular scene is beautiful on its own. And that's ok. Other reasons might be that people are moving too fast. Or it could be the thought that people are harder to draw than buildings and structures. I'm just guessing.

When I began urban sketching, I found that drawing scenes without people often felt too still. Too quiet. And if it were a sketch of a corner in my city, bustling with people, leaving the people out seemed to make that scene look like a dead town. For me, drawing the people in helped complete the context of what the place was all about. So it's something I try to do.

Drawing people with construction lines or gesture lines often takes too long. And I wasn't attracted to adding in representative shapes as people (dot, rectangle, two lines for the legs). It works in a technical architectural drawing. But urban sketching is more expressive. I wanted the people in my scenes to resemble the people that were actually in my scene, at least, to some degree. Their clothing, hairstyle, perhaps even their poses, gave clues of what that place was all about. Eg. People in the business district would were office outfits. People around the bars would wear more casual hip outfits.

Using the contour drawing approach, which I lean toward, this is how I draw them quickly these days. It may not be the ultimate or ONLY way. It's just my way, for now.

Here are the steps: Outer shape (I might break this in to 2-3 smaller shapes if they are moving quickly), smaller shapes like skin colour shapes, clothing shape, blacks, mid-tones. Most of the time, if I'm drawing a scene with buildings and such, the people will be appearing small. So I'd recommend practicing drawing them small. And also really simply. You could think of them like those tiny figurines you'd put in a terranium! Here are a few exercises I've done in my drawing classes. I did a YouTube video on my process here: https://youtu.be/GIQtKVKSTUw

And this is an example of me drawing people quickly in a scene.