illus5040: Urban Sketching

We were set to do urban sketching as our weekly task. I started the brief off by drawing the view from my back garden. It's just houses and an archway to the street which faces Rickerby park. It's not a particularly interesting view, but I did enjoy drawing the drainpipes, there's something particularly satisfying about them. 

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Over the weekend I decided to take a nice long walk with two other fellow illustration students and draw some hecking buildings. I talked about buildings in a previous blog post, how usually I struggle with them and usually I hate drawing them because of their minute details and the constant need to think properly about perspective. However over the course of the weekend I started hating them less and less. The drawings I did weren't perfect of course, they were drawn out in the open and I think out of everything this was the hardest part of the brief. I did a lot of them by drawing it out first and working on minute details later at home, it was just so I could bear with the fact I was struggling so much with drawing in public and I wanted to present at least semi decent pieces of work by the end. 

The first two drawings I did while we were waiting for the third member of our party to show up, I did two drawings of Hotel Chocolat in the city centre of Carlisle. I wanted to capture the brightness of the day through watercolours however I don't believe I was very successful in capturing it in either drawing. The watercolours were a bit washed out and I messed up a lot of the shading in the second drawing, but for a quick two drawings I feel like it could have gone a lot worse. I also don't know why, perhaps the man sat on the bench just playing the accordion or the people outside bars and pubs sitting and drinking beer and the particularly nice weather that day. It just... felt very French

The next drawing I did was of that crescent shaped area near bar solo, apparently I have a thing for rooftops because I keep drawing them for some odd reason. This drawing took a lot less time than the rest only because half way through drawing it a very drunk man came up to the student next to us and started harassing him so before he moved onto us, we decided it was best to leave. Note: it was 2 o' clock in the afternoon when this happened. I don't know what it is about lockdown that's made people lose their minds but people have. Things have just gotten a bit weird around Carlisle I feel. I don't know how but it has.