My daughter’s was home from university for a week and we’ve had some snow storms.  These two things combined to keep me from going out sketching.  I was longing to do some so I headed out one morning to one of the big malls, and their food court.

Food courts are great places to sketch people, either while they’re eating or when they’re standing in line to order.  All food courts are not created equal, however.  There’s a mall really close to my house that has two food courts and they’re both horrible sketching locations.  Why?  Because it’s hard to sit so you can  draw people ordering and their tables are crammed together, making it hard to sketch without someone slopping their Big Mac sauce on your sketch (grin).

But the one I went to is the newest in our city and it’s big, very roomy and there’s just the right distance between tables and vendors to allow lines to form in a couple directions (providing different angles) and the view open.

There’s not much to tell about the session.  I got a cup of coffee and started drawing.  I was using my Platinum 3776 with Platinum Carbon Black ink and I was sketching in a Stillman & Birn 4×6 softcover Alpha series book.  Great combination for this sort of thing as I like to add a bit of color when I finish up and the S&B paper accommodates that nicely.  I did time the session as I wanted to see how long I could keep doing it without getting tired.  I’m a lazy sketcher and have to push myself to sketch for long periods of time.  Come to think of it, long periods of time is a very relative term and, for me, “long periods of time” means relatively short.  Quick sketching is rather intense as people are moving a lot, but I managed to draw for 45 minutes, punctuated by coffee drinking.  I ended up with 14 sketches.  Here’s some of them.  I got tired of scanning.  I told you I am a lazy sketcher (grin).