Tiptree Sings at Christmas

First, an apology as the autoposting to this blog hasn't worked for the last few posts. You can check out the missing ones here: Blog posts.

I love going to see choirs sing at Christmas, so last night I went back to Tiptree to see a friend sing in the choir she belongs to. The setting was St Lukes church, which I have only drawn from the outside, so made sure I had coloured pencils alongside my sketchbook.

My first sketch was of some of the female choristers chatting before the concert. They were very animated and seemed quite excited which I hope I captured in the sketch. What do you think?

Listening to the lovely singing, I sketched the top drawing showing a section of the choir and the church.

I forgot to take the proof of on-location sketching shot until the choir was about to start singing in the second half of the concert, but hopefully gives a little idea of my view.




Other news: I was very flattered when Simone Ridyard asked me to contribute to her architectural sketching book, Archisketcher. Yesterday, I received my copy and the whole book is fabulous! I would thoroughly recommend buying it for your shelves because of the fabulous content, not because of my contribution :)

Finally, due to logistics the Essex&Suffolk Sketchers have renamed themselves Colchester Sketchers. 

The FB group is here: Colchester Sketchers

Have a good week everyone.

Café Sketching

This week's homework for Liz Steel's online course Sketching Now, which I'll be posting about next Saturday, was to sketch in a café. My morning didn't go to plan, which those of you doing the course know, is what happened to Liz too. The brief was to sit head on a café counter and to draw from the focal point out. My idea was to head to Tiptree Tearooms & Jam Factory mid-morning for a cuppa and a scone. 

 

However, I got engrossed in some material I was preparing for a course I am giving and didn't get there until midday. I got a head on view, of the side, which was not exciting as the photo shows. To my left was the hostess desk, so I chose to draw that instead.

I used my Super5 pen, which is filled with Noodlers blueblack ink, and started at the desk, added the girl who flitted there and back, then worked more details out from that point. I do like how the sketch looked before I added watercolour.

 Initially, I had thought to have a scone with my tea, but as it was lunchtime I ordered a salad instead. Whilst, waiting for it to arrive I added colour to my sketch. (The finished scanned image is below). Unfortunately, due to a huge queue of people waiting for tables at the hostess desk, I scrapped my plan to sketch my food too, so ate quickly and left.

 

I will be posting tomorrow as I've been nominated for the Around the World Blog Hop. Please come back and see what I post. In the meantime check out some of the others' posts such as Béliza's post here and Tina's here.

Dog sitting studies #6

My dog-sitting duties ceased on Monday, so here are the final sketches and some photos. Nelson often lies on his back, legs akimbo, for hours on end, like this...

Nelson asleep in the lounge.

That is until someone gets a camera or a sketchbook out and then he moves after 2 seconds. I wanted to capture that pose, but as you can see he didn't stay still - it's the top one. I actually did better in #3 here.

 He is a strange dog as he doesn't like to swim, but will paddle in any water. I published some pics of him earlier in a pond. Here he is in the same pond later in the week.

Another walk, in a different part of the same pond.

In a pond up the woods.

Two-tone Nelson.

Finally, I was taking some reference photos for a possible drawing and Nelson decided he wanted to be included:

Tiptree Heath: a work in progress

Walking Nelson the other day, I loved the colours of the heather on the Heath with it's various shades of purples & violets. Unfortunately, my acrylics are in Italy, so I'm trying to capture it in watercolour. I've started wet-on-wet on unstretched 185gm² Canson's watercolour paper. The trees that line the heather are too strong, but I intend to work up the front later.

BTW I'd love to see how Marian Fortunati would paint this as she does fantastic oil paintings. Check out her work at marianfortunati.com