The First Post!

It's been pouring with rain in Joburg the last week. The sketch above was done in light drizzle from my car, from a parking lot looking down one of the main roads leading into the city. Two women from this café are barbequeing - or braaiing as we call it - sausages out on the pavement, tempting passers by with hungry-making smells.

The rain came down harder over the next few days, so I took my moleskine into Cresta shopping mall and looked for a scene to sketch. That little old lady in the red jacket caught my eye - she was like a tiny bright bird amongst all the neutral colours, the tiles and mirrors.

My first posting to Urban Sketcher's - a bit nervously! I think that I'm not going to repeat posting all my USk sketches here, unless there's something more I want to say about them. Here I'll admit that I haven't quite worked out my mediums and methods - I'm hoping that will come with practice, hopefully not too much trial and error. The top sketch was done on one page of my moleskine, and I wished I'd used the double spread. I did on the next one a few days later, but got all uncertain and thought I'd use a pencil first, then pen and add colour at home. The pencil lines were fine, and I lost some of the spontaneity by going over them.

I had a good view of the escalators from my table too, and did a quick pencil sketch of some of the 'travellers' - but the scanned image was really faint and I had to pump up the lines a lot in Photopaint. I think I will just go straight in with pen next time.