This was one of those days where I really wanted to get out and sketch, but I just wasn’t feeling up to it. Plus, Dr Who was on later (I think it was that episode by Neil Gaiman), so I ended up trying to draw the hedge and the blue sky above it.
Plus, I really wanted to try doing watercolour in my new sketchbook. I kept taking it out but forgetting my watercolour set, which was just massively annoying. I even did one drawing where I added watercolour afterwards, so desperate was I to break the cherry on this watercolour sketchbook. I had been sitting in the open-air cafe at Hitchin town square (the nice one run by the Italian guys, not the big one in the middle) and been sketching all the bits around town, including a tree.
I started off by doing the buildings, which is a classic mistake that I do. I love architecture, so my first response to drawing in towns is to whip out my pen and start on the buildings. Really, I need to work up to them, letting myself get loosened up. I find that once I’ve been drawing for about a solid hour I’m capable of tackling subjects that, otherwise, I’d make a giant hash of.
But I didn’t warm up, so I made a giant hash of my drawings, whilst sitting in public at this cafe full of chatty people. As I finished, one of the other patrons asked me what I was going to do with my sketches. Would I be putting them on canvas?
It was an interesting view as to what people thought when they saw me drawing. The owner of the coffee shop had said to me “Hey, it’s like Covent Garden now, with the sketching!”. I offered to pick his pocket to complete the feel, but he declined. Then there was the lady who walked past and looked at me, dead in the eye, and said the word “sketching”. That was a bit freaky.
I guess these are all things that contributed to me staying in. Sometimes I just want to draw, and not deal with how other people see me when I’m drawing in public.
Another view of my parent’s undefeatable hoarding instinct.
