Half finished sketches, life, and a little reminder

I didn't get much sketching done this week, and I very much apologise for not having been commenting much on fellow PPF artists, but sometimes, life just gets in the way. Last weekend was the finest weekend in a long time, and after the shopping and all the boring household chores done by Saturday afternoon, I was looking forward to a creative weekend, and a trip to the Botanical Garden for some sketching on Monday. Something I've been wanting to do for weeks and weeks, but the weather was always too bad. And then my Dad had a bicycle accident on Saturday afternoon and was taken to the hospital. It was a constant up and down for three days, but all's okay now and he was discharged yesterday.

I did actually go to the Botanical Garden on Monday, but it wasn't quite the creative, inspiring day out I had planned. There's a direct bus from the hospital to the Botanical Garden and so I decided to get there, after all, in the afternoon. 40 minutes across the city to the other end, which was actually quite an interesting journey. So many changes, so many new buildings. Maybe I should spend more time exploring. I arrived there after 3pm, walked through the beautiful park, looked for frogs in the pond, and then found a nice place to sit with the palm houses in view. I got out my sketchbook, made a quick ink drawing, got my watercolour box out - and then it started raining. So I went into the palm houses and watched the fish in the pond of the biggest of the them for a while, and then I went back home. I added some uninspired watercolour paint later at home, but it still is a rather unfinished sketch. As is the banana one.

On Wednesday, I attended a librarians' symposium in Aarau. As that meant sitting around all day, I used the lunch break for some wandering around town. I had taken my sketchbook and wanted to do at least one sketch outside. I went to the Kantonsbibliothek (county library) and sat outside, eating my sandwich and looking for something interesting to sketch. The buildings around were all half hidden behind some beautiful trees. The trees themselves would certainly have been very intriguing to sketch, but I didn't have the time for it. So I ended up with just a quick sketch of one of the stone thingies for attaching big heavy chains, that surrounded the square in front of the library, and a tiny little dandelion flower. At least I made a sketch.

When I went through my folder with scans on my computer, I found some sketches that I made back in 2014. For the one of Läckö slott I used a photo that I have taken many years ago as reference. The one of the church was the first, and pretty much only one I've ever actually done outside. Looking through these sketches just reminded me how little I have been sketching recently, and pretty much all of last year. So I'm posting these here as a reminder for myself to sketch more, much more, again. And for finally overcoming that fear of sketching outside...