A spot of urban sketching

Sitting on a bench on College Green looking over towards Park Street yesterday afternoon, making the most of the incredibly warm weather we've been having (and I'm glad I did as this morning it's raining again). I've never drawn this view before, even though I've walked past it hundreds and hundreds of times over the years.

New things

The old Bristol General Hospital

                           I've been posting urban sketches on Flickr recently and more general artwork posts on another blog. They can be found here if you fancy having a look:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/citysketching/ 

http://charlottealicemurray.wordpress.com/ 

Home again

Well, we made it back home to Bristol and cycled just over 1200 miles through the best of northern Europe's summer weather. I was amused to discover that people in every country along the way made the same joke- it's pouring with rain and they say 'Ah, a Danish/ Swedish/ Belgian summer'. It's not just us.

Life's been busy since getting back in August- I'm doing a teacher training course- and daily drawing has taken a back seat but hasn't stopped altogether. I've got two sketchbooks from the trip and am planning to scan and post them in some form- I'll put the link on here.

In the meantime, here's a drawing of the rooftops of Bedminster- this is how I know I'm back home!

Cycling adventure

Well, I was going to post drawings from the past few days before I leave Stockholm to cycle home to England. However, the scanner, the camera, the computer and even blogger seem to have other ideas, so I'll just have to sign off temporarily in writing! I will be drawing daily over the next month and 2000km, and will post the drawings when I get back to Bristol. So, if you happen to be in southern Sweden, Denmark, northern Germany, the Dutch or Belgian coast or northern France, look out for two heavily laden cycle tourers, one with sketch book in hand!

28th- 30th June

28th June: 'modified' contour drawing i.e. looking at the paper some of the time. The view from Detroit Gallery- again.

29th June: 'expanding' drawing - adding new pieces of paper as needed to end up with a big drawing, by stealth! From the Friday night workshop I ran on blind contour drawing.

30th June: drawing from an object while listening to different types of music. From Jenny Soep's 'Drawing with, to and from music' workshop. I loved this little monkey sculpture so much that I drew it over and over again.

26th- 27th June

26th June: playing around with contour lines and, ahem, colouring in!

27th June: another chunk of time sitting in the gallery- a good excuse to draw.

21st- 25th June

21st June: Detroit Gallery & studios- where I've had a space for the last six months and joint exhibition on at the moment. I'll be spending a lot of time looking at this view this week!

22nd June: Midsummer Eve, this much bright light around at 10pm.

23rd June: watching a documentary about a nuclear waste storage place in Finland. Not what I would have considered a particularly interesting subject until I watched it, but actually a superb piece of documentary and imaginative fim making. Into Eternity- worth watching!

24th June: near the end of a 50 mile/ 80 km cycle. Interesting working with a watersoluble pencil which had got wet in the two downpours we rode through... also while standing under a dripping tree. I might have to try pre-wetting the pencil again sometime- I really liked the waxy marks.

25th June: lettuce on the windowsill is the extent to which green fingers can be indulged at the moment.