Urban Sketching: Wellington Street

Today I met my friend Cheryl to do some "urban sketching". We went to Victoria Park and decided to sketch this house on Wellington Street. After several days of painting plein air, it was a delightful change to work in pen in my sketchbook....less paraphernalia to cart, no colours to consider, just black and white. My original plan was to apply watercolour to the sketch but  I decided just to leave well enough alone. Definitely a couple of problems with this sketch, but overall I am OK with it. Cheryl and I agreed that the next time Urban Sketchers holds a symposium in the States or here in Canada, we would like to attend.

Sketching Buildings

I have been meeting with my friend, Cheryl Radford, once a week for a few months in order to try to improve my sketching skills, particularly sketching buildings,  in preparation for an upcoming trip to Italy where most of what I will be seeing (and painting) is architecture. Cheryl does beautiful architectural sketches, so her work is certainly an inspiration! Today we met at Starbucks on Richmond Street and then walked down until we found something promising to sketch. I worked first in graphite and then in ink to produce the sketch above. Hopefully we will continue to meet and sketch so that by the time we are in Italy buildings won't be so difficult for me.