I had been in a sort of a rut lately with my art, and I thought sketching with fellow urban sketchers might be just the thing to pull myself out of the rut and get me back on track again.
I spent the morning being inspired by the pen and ink sketching from a book called The Sketch. It is a book that is no longer available and I remember acquiring it in the second hand market a couple of years ago. I remember learning a lot from it, and going back to it today was helpful.
For today's sketching I decided to go back to my first love, which is drawing, and focus on capturing the essence of the place and also think about composition a bit.
The South Bay Urban Sketchers met at the Shoreline Park in Mountain View, and it was an absolutely gorgeous day for it.
I sketched our fellow sketcher for a bit to get things started, I focused on ink and added color in a very restrained manner, purely to separate the planes a bit.
sketch of sketcher
As I looked around to find my next subject to sketch, I was struck by the big tree in front of the boathouse, and I decided to incorporate the two in my next sketch. I was more deliberate with this one than I planned to. I like the result over all, but I would have preferred to finish it sooner and move on to another one.
boathouse cafe sketch at shoreline park
