While I was due to go to a concert in the end, I decided not to use that event for this exercise. I wanted to be fully present for my favourite band (and it's very hard to sketch when you are squashed like a sardine!). So instead I made my own event to sketch somewhere outside of both my normal activities and comfort zone.
As a family, we went to Southsea near Portsmouth and spent time around the attractions there. This time I was conscious to try and capture the place as well as the people. I started to sketch while we walked along, switching between a blue pencil and ink. I had brought a number of different pens with me and had the plan to alternate them throughout the day to experiment with what I liked.
I also had my plein-air 'art adventure' backpack with me including some inks and gouache. When we found a good location to make camp for a while, I experimented by laying down bright inks and then using a Japanese fude fountain pen to add lines on top.
I also captured the cafe hosting us, who were incredibly kind and kept us all hydrated in the hot sun. I decided to try some plein air painting, realising too late that I had brought only a small selection of gouache colours. This limited my colour gamut, so I did my best to portray the building in a way that worked. Doing the painting took at least a few hours for me, so once it was done I decided to move on to alleviate my son's patient boredom!
He has been drawing too and we took stopped on occasion to challenge each other to drawing challenges. I think he beat me on his rendition of the roller coaster! I used these to practice using the pencil to capture the overall scene and then to add black lines on top for details.
We ended our meandering near to the hovercraft ferry terminal to the Isle of Wight. Luckily it landed while we were there and I took the time to capture as much as possible. (On the opposite wall you can see a quick sketch I did during a meeting at work, I grabbed my book and added it on the first page with enough room!). We finished up our day by the sea itself, and this gave me a great opportunity to practice people-watching again. I wanted to emulate the quicker style of capturing figures so I tried to experiment with different approaches.
Overall this was a good exercise to get back into the habit of taking my 'art adventures'. The fountain pend still works well for me, but I want to cultivate the combination of both observational and caricaturing skills so that I can start to create my own more cartoony short-hand for these activities.
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