Last Thursday I wrote a blog post titled “Waiting for Spring.” I moaned and groaned that in spite of spring being a month old, it was still too cold to sketch outdoors.
Well guess what happened? On Friday our temperatures increased significantly. We had sun…LOTS of sun. Even the wind died down. So I tucked my sketchbook under my arm and headed out for a weekend of sketching. It was wonderful.
Here’s the first sketch I did. I was out with my buddy Yvan and we’d previously talked about sketching on Rue de la Remparts, which skirts the upper portion of our ‘old’ (founded in 1608) city. So, our first stop was there. I did this sketch in a Stillman & Birn 7×10 Alpha spiral sketchbook. Though I really dislike spiral-bound for storage, I love it for this larger format because I can fold the book back on itself , making it manageable while the book rests on my knees. I used a TWSBI Mini filled with Noodler’s Lexington Gray.
While “warm” by comparison to the previous day, it was still cool and we both ran out of body heat about the same time. So, I snapped the photo above and we headed for something warm to drink. I applied some color later and this was the result.
I suppose some might suggest that the weather changing had nothing to do with my blog post – that it was only a coincidence. I’ll continue to believe otherwise… I think.
Fantastic sketch! And love the colour application. I love that feeling too, when the weather starts to warm – that uplifting feeling of being in the sunshine. I am trying to enjoy the last of our warm autumn days…I don’t think there are many left. I see a lot of cafe sketching in the coming months for me 🙂 Looking forward to seeing more outdoor sketches from the other side of the world!
I think I’m becoming (have become?) a sketching fanatic. Hopefully it was just the flash of sun and things will get back to normal soon but I was sketching for three days straight. Had a ball but my writing has taken a back seat to sketching and that ain’t good 🙂
I was pretty depressed last fall when outdoor sketching shut down on me. I’m not a people sketcher so spending a whole winter with nothing else to draw wasn’t appealing. I was cool to the idea of sketching in museums until I did it once. As you saw, I got hooked on the idea and filled an entire sketchbook and then some with museum sketches. You might give them a try.
Cheers — Larry