Out of My Depth!

As a an architecture lover, I should be used to angles, straight lines and pipes but sketching these ''stills'' from the Weyermann Malting Factory really did take me out of my comfort zone. Here is the complete sketchbook page with my initial sepia sketch on the left, the exterior of the Victorian Weyermann factory on the right and the fabulous copper stills in the centre. These sketches are a mixture of sepia fineliner, watercolour, watercolour pencil and coloured pencil and I'm finding increasingly more pleasure in mixing my sketching media. 

I'm hoping this is a still because although an expert at drinking gin for example, I haven’t got a clue how it’s made and Weyermann produce their own whisky, schnapps and gin, alongside malt for beer, somit could be any kind of piece of equipment to do with those processes. 

My sketching style when dealing with architecture is ''love the wonk'', I'm a big fan of wobbly lines and squiffy window panes! Not for me the pleasures of a perfect architectural elevation drawing but I think drawing machines  is a wee bit different, a little bit of accuracy should be aimed for and yes I did feel out of my depth. My ruler tends to collect dust on the desk but this time I did use it for a while. The contrast between the coppery reflections and the worked steel was fun to do, even though I didn’t think it would be.

 Having said that machines probably won’t play a large part in my sketching in the future but this little sojourn into machinery took the edge off my fear of trying again in the future. Anything that has to do with gin, must be good! I'll have a stiff G&T to that, cheers!