The Wanderers

Bear with me while I work through some stuff out loud here... I've been wanting to draw more of the urban landscape in which I live, ie. the city and its structures, as well as the people - my main focus and the subject I'm naturally drawn to ('scuse the pun). But, frankly, sketching buildings is an ordeal, and am not very good at it, and trying to do so makes me irritable.
On Thursday, BFG (my husband, whose initials happen to be those, but who is in fact, quite Big, Friendly, and if not a Giant.... but I digress) and I went to the cricket match between Australia and South Africa at the Wanderers Stadium*. Thinking I'd combine watching the game with a sketching opportunity, I started off trying to draw the whole scene, with all the buildings and spectator's stands surrounding the field. I missed a lot of the cricket and had nothing but a rather bad scratchy drawing to show for it (and a bad scratchy attitude!)So I abandoned that and sketched some of the people around us - mostly during the tea and lunch breaks - so I could watch some of the days play, and decided that that would do for my next Urban Sketchers posting. (see more here)Today I thought I'd have another go at drawing the Bullring (*aka), purely with the aim of enjoying it. I've seen some glorious loose, joyful sketches on USk, such as this and this and thought that if I could get anywhere near that abandonment, I would enjoy at least the process, and possibly also the result. So I put down some reasonably accurate pencil guidelines, and then sloshed on some watercolours, dibbled some felt tip pens and white gel pen, and finished off with dip pen and Higgins black ink - and did in fact, very much enjoy the process - and "Viola!" (as my daughter used to say at six-ish) I am much happier with the result. I think I'm on my way to finding a method, though I can't schlepp all those materials around with me...