March Sketch Crawl

“You mean you go outside with a bunch of people. And draw?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Huh.”


It sort of looks like this.

More SketchCrawling, this time at Union Station and Olvera Street. I’ve never been to this part of downtown, so it’s a really good excuse to see it. We worry about the threat of rain and thunderstorms that, happily, never materialize.

Union Station provides great architectural details, but we take advantage of a bright spell when we first get there to sit outside and draw in the courtyard.


I know, you want to click to see it bigger. Go to my flickr site to see them all; the link is at the end.

After a bit, we amble over to Olvera Street and enjoy the people, the bright flowers outside, the open-air market. Some of us get distracted from sketching for a little bit.

Easily distracted by shiny things. This scale makes it look like a pin that you wear, huh? It's a wall-hanging thing, about 12 inches wide...

People stop by and look at us, “Oh, they’re drawing!”. Kids come over and peer over our shoulders, look up at what we’re drawing, then back to our sketchbooks, nodding.
“You do this for class?”
“No, for fun.”
“For fun? Ohhhh”, and they smile when they walk away.



It might not be raining, but it is cold, and lunch is a good break to warm up a bit. Afterwards, everyone sits back and talks. We pass around our sketchbooks. Wow. Everyone has their own style, and it’s so great to share. You see sparks of new inspiration in everyone’s eyes after seeing all these different approaches and techniques. I see the Crawlers at the other end of the table pulling out their travel watercolor sets; Show and Tell.

Our bellies full, we head back out. Some leave for home, for work; a few of us stay to draw more. We meet up with the group of students that we’d noticed there earlier in the morning, and we learn that they’re there for a class. And hey, turns out Robin and I are alumni; same school, same major as them. The students ask, Do we have jobs? In our field? And we still have time to sketch? For fun? Yes, yes, yes, and most definitely, yes. The guys leave to return to campus, heartened. It’s a big city, but a small world, huh?

We draw for a bit more,


get some coffee, catch up with each other’s lives. That’s the best part of SketchCrawl.

So these are just a few of the photos and sketches.
Click here to go to my flickr site to see the rest, bigger images and more photos, with comments.

Posts from some of the rest of the gang:
Robin’s
Hashi’s
Adriane’s 1, and 2
Karen’s Olvera Street, Union Station courtyard, and People.

If you look carefully, you'll see some of the same scenes and people depicted in several different ways.. :)


Artsy/Technical notes: I did a lot of more tight, detailed sketching and computer drafting at work this week, so I wanted to work more loosely out on 'Crawl. I bought a Copic brand brush-tipped pen a bit ago (you thought I just bought things to stick on the 'fridge, toys for the kitchen, didn't you?) and had fun finally working with it.