Urban Sketching South Wales : January Sketchcrawl

I've just participated in my first sketchcrawl, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Last year I joined my local Urban Sketchers group through Facebook. It's called the South Wales Urban Sketchers group, although it's very much centred on Cardiff. There hasn't been an event that I've been aware of for several months now, and they always coincided with prior engagements. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

So, what's a sketchcrawl? Well, basically you all meet in a designated place - in this case the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff ( probably the best free show in town - it's worth going just for the French Impressionist paintings in the gallery). You all agree a tie to meet up again, and then you go off, pick what you want to sketch, and go for it.

I'm not very good at the lightning sketching thing, so I only ended up making two. By and large I'm happy with the way that  can sketch, especially in pen and ink, but I still feel I struggle when it comes to applying watercolour washes. So I forced myself to make at one of my sketches today a line and wash sketch. Here it is.

As the inscription says, this is a statue of Perseus by Frederic Pomeroy, and for once I think it actually looks better than it did before I started applying colour.

I spent so long on my sketches that I only had enough time to make one other. This is a pen and ink sketch of a stuffed buzzard

This was in a case in a very busy part of the museum, I have no problem with people walking in front of me while I'm sketching, and the good thing about telling people so was that many of them stopped for a look, and I had several lovely conversations.

When we met back up to show our efforts to each other, I mentioned how much I'd enjoyed the interaction with people while I was sketching the buzzard, one of the other sketchers said that this was something she felt I only enjoyed because I'm confident. I don't know so much about that. I think it's just because I'm only really sketching for fun, it isn't a competition, and I can take it if people don't like the sketch, or they don't pass comment. when they do like it, though, it's wonderful. The fact that I had an enquiry about doing a commission as well was a bonus.