Sketching with a friend

Sketching in Starbucks. (Photo by DeLane Rosenau)

NOTE: This is a recap of my post yesterday on The Sketchbook Challenge. Make a resolution to boost your creativity this year, and join us!

This month’s theme of Artist Dates meshes well with one of my New Year’s resolutions: getting together with friends more. (My other resolutions are sleeping more, drinking more wine, and making more art.) A few days ago, I e-mailed my good friend and fellow fiber artist DeLane Rosenau, and asked if she’d like to share a cup of tea with me while I sketched. I just love multi-tasking! We met up at a local Starbucks, and while DeLane sipped her tea, and we chatted, I sketched her cup:

 

It was very crowded in Starbucks, and I don’t think anyone (but DeLane) noticed me working away. I don't sketch in public very often, but it’s been my experience that people either ignore you, or they watch and are extremely interested, and usually impressed. There’s nothing much to fear, because you don’t know these people, and you probably will never see them again. 

This is DeLane with her tea and my sketchbook. One advantage to taking a friend on your Artist Date is that she or he is usually supportive about your work (as long as she/he is truly a friend!) and this can be very helpful if you are feeling at all shy or out of place sketching in public. 

Once DeLane was properly caffeinated, we decided to move our Date to a local antiques mall; I pulled up a comfy chair and my sketchbook, and DeLane went shopping, swinging by every 20 minutes or so to see how the sketch was coming along.

As a former journalist, I have a definite attraction to old typewriters.  I love the sinuous lines of this Remington Quiet Riter.

Here I am working away amidst the antiques. Every so often someone would wander by and ask what I was doing, but mostly things were peaceful.

(Photo by DeLane Rosenau)

(Photo by DeLane Rosenau)

And here’s the finished sketch. If you count the keys, you’ll find there are way too many; chalk it up to a lack of planning or to artistic license.

I have been trying to keep my small Moleskine sketchbook and my Lamy Safari fountain pen (my latest love) in my purse all the time. That way, I can sketch whenever I have a few minutes to kill. In this sketchbook, I am also trying to force myself to always work in black permanent ink, instead of pencil. The sketches are not as perfect as I usually demand of myself when working with pencil and eraser, but I think they have a lot of charm because of their imperfections.