Boats, Geese, and other Sketchers
I sketched with other people for the first time in a long time. It was an enjoyable time, but I’m feeling unsettled from it.
Is this what it feels like to “return to normal”?
Have you felt a similar bubble of anxiety before, during, or after a social meetup?
In any case, it was a beautiful day - sunny with cool winds. I found a sketchers group on the Meetup app, and joined them at Charleson Park overlooking the False Creek.
Most of the sketchers chose to doodle on the spot, but I really wanted to draw some boats. So I walked over to the edge of the water, sat on an overturned tree trunk and drew some boats along the small pier.
If you’re curious, I started at the left with the street-sign indicating the biking and walking paths. I like to begin with a structure that helps me set the rest of the scene in proportion and perspective. Selecting this post, and putting it on my page determined a lot of things for me - the slope of the path, the size of the background, and the line of my horizon.
The second most important thing for me to draw early was the large tree on the left. It’s arching branches framed a lot of the action in my scene, and helped me place things correctly with respect to each other. I decided to use it as negative space - not doing any linework for its shadows - so that it would stand out from the rest of the scene. In this way, it also does not distract from where the details are, i.e. the people and the path and the boats.
Details are only admirable when contrasted with lack of details, in my opinion. Otherwise the scene can get too overwhelming.
The drawing took me something like 45 minutes. After I was done, I rejoined the group behind me, and chatted with some of the other sketchers. While we were introducing ourselves and making first conversations, I made a couple more quick drawings, just to feed my appetite for people-drawing. It would have felt like an incomplete session if I didn’t draw some people!
We were not all sketchers. Our group was joined by Felix, who was apparently just walking by. Felix works in AWS, and is a magician on the side. He started with some rubber-band tricks and then showed us some amazing card tricks!
The area people had chosen to sit down was odd, because it was clearly the domain of geese. They seemed annoyed to have us usurp their territory, and the grass was marked with fresh goose-poop everywhere. You had to watch carefully before you sat down anywhere!
A goose also pops into both of my drawings above. As you can see, they were mildly curious but not very interested at all.
In showing my sketchbook to some of the other sketchers, I listened to their comments about my line-work style. I took note of their work too, and tried to contrast it to my own. In this way, sometimes I try to think about the way people make their lines. Short strokes are indicative of a style, for sure, but also of a lack of confidence in the “natural line”. I spoke about how I forced myself to be confident with my lines, by constraining myself to use a single fountain pen (without a pencil) and pulling long lines with it. I have my shortcuts which enable me to draw quickly, to minimize the big mistakes, and to hide the ones I do make. I will think on them further and try to point them out in future posts. Stay tuned!
In parting, I made plans with a couple of other people to meet and sketch in downtown over the week. I hope that happens, because on the whole it is really great to be around sketchers when I sketch!