Diary

 

Sketching with friends

It is always delightful to go out En Plein Air with friends to sit, sketch and ocassionally chat. I did just that last week at the Haining, Selkirk with two of my fellow landscape artists. Mostly people ignore you - in fact I said to my friends "Do you feel invisible?" as dogwalkers passed us without acknowledgement. The dogs in their mystic way certainly came to give us a sniff, decide we were benign, then followed their accompanying human. 

I was partially wrong, we did actract some attention - an elderly man came by in his mobility scooter, stopped and said "Do you mind if I watch?". We said we didn't, I added that it wasn't very exciting! We had a little coversation and he went on his way. A little while later a woman came up and excitiedly said "Oh, you are painting, I thought you were". It turns out that she is a sculptor who has recently moved into the area. We had a bit of a chat about her work, her workshops and sketching tours and the high cost of art studio rents. 

We did quite a bit of work between us, I did a watercolour, mixed media sketch and a couple of monochrome doodles. Friend A did two oil pastel sketches, and watching her use the pastels, blending them with a brush, made me think that I should give them a go - I dislike them because they are so sticky and I am that messy person that gets paint all over my hands. It also led to the three of us discussing the quality of oil pastels on the market. 

Friend B is doing a course, and she was frantically doing chalk pastel and charcoal sketches at speed as she has to fill up her sketchbook. It rained, we moved under the trees, we had our picnic lunches, we nurtured each other and had a thoughly lovely time untill we got so cold that we knew it was time to go home.