Having Fun in the Sun!

The good weather got me packing my sketching stuff and heading down to the centre of my ''hood''! My husband and I have often walked down into the middle of our village of a Sunday and never saw a soul, so I decided to sketch the town centre. Little did I suspect that the sun would bring out all those hikers, bikers and Sunday strollers …… I unsuspectingly became the centre of attention. Parked on the edge of a pavement (although in fact the edge is also street level) bus drivers stopped to peer out of their windows (and say a cheery hello) and lots of lovely people stopped to chat and flip through my sketchbook.

Light was tricky lots of sun and shadows some crazy perspective and boom, three hours later this was the result (alongside a numb bum but we'll ignore that.)  

As you know, I love diddling with façades face on but no, today it was time for a bit of colour and perspective. My concentration span has decreased with getting older so I was very surprised to find that I'd managed to stick with it for 3 hours! Time to take stock  and head for home. 

There are a couple of compositional problems that I don’t like, but hey, Urban sketching is about truthfully rendering your image so yes the tree line stops with the height of the roof in the background and this photo is taken standing up so it’s a wee bit different.

Aren’t these buildings fabulous, all mid 16th C and still standing? What changes in the world they must have seen …… speaking of standing, getting up from my sketching place proved to be tricky, numb bum and all but hey … a sketcher's got to do what a sketcher's got to do!