I’ve got a few sketches with umbrellas in them and love them. I can usually remember how wet I got while sititing there.
I’ve learnt the hard way how hard it is to keep drawing and getting pencil marks on watercolour paper when it’s raining. I still keep doing it though. In bad weather I carry a number of bin bags, one for the bench to keep me dry when i sit on it, one to go over my legs and one to keep the sketch pad in, or most of it, while I’m drawing. I also try to hold a big umbrella while I’m doing this. It must look hilarious but few photographers are out when this is happening so that’s a relief, I don’t think there’s any evidence other than I’ve just told you on a public blog.. tee hee.
The half marathon should have given me a great chance to support those running and draw from a few of the benches I’d left for this reason. We sat and sat and sat and it didn’t start. Eventually someone told us it had been cancelled and people sent home because of how cold they’d been getting waiting. The weather was wet and cold. One person decided to go through the route at least, I’m not sure how far they went but they wanted to go for a run and they did.
The sketch pad I used got completely soaked The paper’s so heavy that it survived the soaking, the hard backing sheet didn’t and I have to treat this set of illustrations with care. the weather was very sunny when I painted this and I was tempted to go for a bright colour but looking at the picture reminded me of how cold and miserable it was sitting there waiting getting wetter and wetter and it was harder to use the brighter pallete than a miserable one. I have put in one or two slightly cheerier colours.
My theme for A to Z Blogging Challenge is my Bench Views Revisited illustrations done from benches in and around Peterborough UK which I started in September 2019. I drew No. 88 in February 2020 then lockdown hit. I restarted the series in August 2020 which meant almost half the series were drawn pre-covid lockdown and the rest of the 190 illustrations were done post COVID-19 lockdown.
lynnelives 