My First Sketch Crawl

Today, I went to Twickenham to participate in my first sketch crawl. It was organised by the London Urban Sketching society and was great fun! There were about 30 people and the weather was great, I even made some new friends.

I started out sketching a fallen tree which you can see above. I used the same set of markers as in the last few portrait drawings. Using them has been a great success so far and has done what I hoped it would: force me to focus on values over line. I still draw an underdrawing in pencil first to get the forms right. Next, I want to try limiting myself to just two values and slowly add more.

Next I drew some of the waterfowl that was swimming in the Thames. Except for the swan which was drawn with the help of a quickly shot picture, these were all drawn quickly as the geese and ducks were in movement.

Finally, I painted a church that was next to the river.

I used my new watercolour kit that is built around a Stanley tool belt which found lots of interest from other sketchers. It's still work in progress but once the setup has settled, I'll make a separate blogpost about it.

All in all a fun day!