THE chatty lady poked her sleeping husband in his side.

“Bob, look, he’s drawing you!” she whispered to him as the Queensland Rail commuter train trundled along the Cleveland line.

“All right then,” the man said as he glanced and smiled at Steve Younger with his sketchbook, before getting comfortable and returning to his slumber.

Later that evening, the man’s portrait, sketched with only red and white pencil, appeared on a fledgling Instagram account dubbed @trainsketch.

“This gentleman was called Bob. He woke up nudged by his wife and when she told him I was drawing him asleep he was very gracious and welcomed the experience. Bless him. 20 minute train sketch. Aren’t old people great? (sic),” the caption reads.

Any day of the week, Brisbane train commuters may unknowingly be having their portrait sketched.

They won’t know the artist is racing against however long his subject is on the train nor how challenging it is to sketch with the light changing constantly or the carriage jolting.

“I don’t speak to the person on the train,” Mr Younger said.

“I look at the life that person’s lived by looking at what’s written on their face, their laughter lines, the lips, the age and the sunspots.

“I’m just capturing what I see. That person is not staying still. They are looking at a device, or falling asleep or looking around a carriage.”

Mr Younger, 41, of Wellington Point, started sketching random commuters on his trip to or from work in Fortitude Valley about six months ago as a way to pass the time.

“I normally do them a couple of times a week, though I haven’t done any for the last couple of weeks as we’ve had so many late work nights,” he said.

Some of those sketches end up on the trainsketch Instagram page.

The page’s description states “I draw people while commuting on the train. It’s totally not creepy.”

There’s the sketch of the regular fellow passenger on Mr Younger’s train who kept smirking as he stayed relatively still one day.

“Fair game,” Mr Younger wrote under the caption on his trainsketch Instagram account.

“In real life he doesn’t look like (Quentin) Tarantino. Well, a bit maybe,” he added.

There’s a half-completed sketch of a woman with long, flowing hair, who exited the train before Mr Younger was finished the drawing.

Another post is of a 30 minute drawing of a sleeping man with “stupendous eyebrows”, that Mr Younger guessed was either sick, fatigued or possibly intoxicated.

“Whatever his condition he had stupendous eyebrows and his unshaven and greasy skin patches reflected the light marvellously,” he wrote.

“Too good to pass up.”

Mr Younger said that sketch was one done on a packed commuter train where he became aware that other passengers were just as engrossed in the sketch as he was.

“Thankfully the subject was unaware,” he said.

Another 20 minute sketch focuses on the short hair of a woman with sunglasses on her head.

“Her hair game was strong,” the artist commented under the drawing.

Mr Younger, who has loved drawing all of his life, said he looks around the train carriage for someone who he thinks has an interesting face.

He said the biggest challenge of drawing train commuters was working quickly to catch the essence of the person, as opposed to being able to work slowly to capture more accuracy as he would if it was a set-up portrait.

“When someone’s moving all the time, you can’t keep looking up and checking you’re right as half the time they walk away when they get to their station,” he said.

“When you’re drawing from life … it’s about capturing the person.

“You make up a lot. You can’t just say ‘Hold it there.’

“And, on a train, your light sources are constantly moving because the train is moving.”

Mr Younger said he has to work quickly as his chosen subject may only end up with light on them for five minutes before it is gone.

“For someone who likes to draw, it’s quite exciting, and challenging” he said.

The British native, who has lived in Australia since 2008, said so far he only had a few people concerned with why he was looking at them, before they realised he was sketching them.

“Once they realise what is happening, they sit back and try not to do anything, though they also become self-conscious,” he said.

“But when they get their bags and they have seconds to get off the train, they come over and ask if they can have a look.

“They have a taken a photo a couple of times, or I take a photo on my phone and they take the sketch home.”

Mr Younger, who is married with two children, said he decided to start sketching on his one hour commute as an outlet after receiving news of the unexpected death of a friend and mentor back home.