A Fine Day Out -- Drawing with Friends

Great painting book

 Saturday morning I joined some friends who I'd gotten to know better at a drawing class I took at Lancaster's Pennsylvania College of Art and Design.  It was on creating a travel journal, but most of us treated it like a great sketching class.  The instructor, Kurt Aspland, was great -- a good teacher and so much fun.  As part of the class, Kurt had us join him on a Saturday morning to spend 3 hours sketching at Lancaster's famous indoor farmers' market.

Melissa concentrating on her drawing

        We had so much fun doing that together, that when Kurt suggested that we start a once a month painting group and call it "the Lautrec Society", we all thought it would be fun.  Saturday was the first meeting of the group, but because Kurt was moving that day, just two friends and I attended. We originally were going to draw at Lancaster's very cool dog park -- it was created by a TV crew because one of our local residents won a contest to have it done for the town.  However, the weather was cool and windy so we decided to go to the central court of our oldest indoor shopping mall, Park City Center.

Florence concentrating on her drawing

    Since Kurt wasn't able to attend, I brought along a great book with instructions/tips for creating believable simplified images of people to add interest to your paintings. We spent a little while checking out the tips and then started drawing.

Quick impressions in pencil

Under the big mall "tent"

     As you may be able to tell by my drawings of fellow Lautrecians concentrating on their own drawings, to me they seemed much more comfortable drawing in that very public setting than I was feeling.  My shyness comes out in such situations, so you can see that I spent a lot of time working on subjects that didn't intimidate me. But one of the great things about working with other artists is that they can inspire me to be more comfortable than I would have been otherwise.  So by the end of our three hours I began feeling much more comfortable than I was at the start of the day. Will that positive outcome last beyond this one time?  Only time will tell, but I'm guessing that continuing to create each month with my fellow society members will keep that growth process alive.  Hope you enjoy some of my more presentable little drawings from the day.

Impressions of mall loungers

Mall walkers at rest