Went out with the Urban Sketchers today – finally! The destination was the Sun Yat Sen Gardens and surrounding area. I sat at a bus stop and drew what was across the street. After two hours, my drawing didn’t seem finished so I added a few things later.
Today’s work is evidence that I have much practice to do. I think that I don’t know really how to organize or plan my drawing. I kind of see something, try to do a pencil draft then get caught up in too much detail and get frustrated. In the end, I may have a sketch but it’s not very…powerful, I guess. The composition isn’t thought out, there’s no real focus – my attention wanders from thing to thing… But it’s still fun. It’s challenging and there’s always a next time. And if I keep at it, maybe I’ll get better.
I’ve had an excellent few weeks out of Officeland and in Drawingland. My first week off saw a blitz of drawing, trying to finish some illustrations for that children’s book I mentioned in April’s post. I’ve been plodding along for months trying to get the right look and feel. I just needed a few free days to pull it all together – and I got them finally in July (yeah, I kind of missed my June deadline…) We’ve finished the first draft and now are in the editing/revising phase, hoping to find some children who can give us a preliminary review.
My next break saw me in San Diego attending the 3rd Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl – and I had a great time. I made the Meet and Greet on Friday night, then on Saturday headed to Balboa Park for a drawing day with the usual Show and Tell at noon then again at 4 pm. Sunday morning we all met at Old Town for morning sketching and gathered at noon to share our drawings.
Urban Sketchers is a world-wide community and a super group to be a part of. Since I got home, I’ve tried to keep up the momentum and went drawing with a few Vancouver urban sketchers at Burnaby Village (I can’t believe I’ve never been there). This link will take you to my effort, but you should take a look at everyone else’s work while you’re there.
At Balboa Park, San Diego – viewing everyone’s sketches
I finally got out to a couple of Urban Sketchers events and am posting a couple of drawings from those outings. Otherwise, my artwork these days (other than my “work” – you know, that officey thing I’m doing during the day) is mostly about drawing crows. My deadline for the crow project is June so I’ll definitely have a June post. I had hoped to work on my site theme before now, but I guess that will come in its own time. My most important task for this blog will be, you guessed it, to back it up properly. See January’s post.
