Well, as usual, we had a Google map (http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8& ... 88317&z=15 all planned out so folk could drop in our out along the way. A surprising number of people turned up at the first stop and stayed all along.
Our first stop was an excellent coffee shop, the Red Roaster.
It wasn't as crowded as I'd feared, and yet there were still enough unsuspecting clients to draw. It amused me, as I was queuing for my coffee, to look back at the gathered people, and notice that the only one who had already got her sketchbook out and started drawing was my 6 year old daughter - no shyness there.
Our next stop was one of Brighton's most famous landmarks - the Pier. Packed with fairground rides, loud games and stunned tourists, this was a place we could have simply stayed at all day.
First I drew the helter-skelter (because that was also what my daughter wanted to draw). From that spot, I realised that the ambitious artist would have been able to draw the whole length of Brighton's seafront... if he or she had several days. And it's also possible to draw the ships in the sea. My bad luck: the one I began drawing immediately turned a neat circle and steamed off.
But silly me, drawing in black and white, when everything on the pier is so brash and bright. I only had pencil crayons with me, but:
I had a go at an impossible task - the fast-moving fairground ride. Well, if you know it's impossible before you start, you don't care how it turns out, right?
We'd all arranged to meet at a bar in the middle of the pier at 12.30 and so we did. The pier is a very popular place (as is Brighton in general) for hen and stag parties, and there was a large hen party sitting behind us. Despite the loud bursts of raucous laughter, they seemed a very nice bunch:
- the bride-to-be being the modest-looking lady in the pink sash.
Onwards to the Pavilion Gardens, where it was a pleasure to be, given the warm sunshine. We temporarily lost some of our party to the nearby Chocolate Festival (which no-one drew?) while the rest of us settled down to draw the many characters Brighton specialises in:
(this guy saw me I think).
And I know the girl lying down with the camera did, because she took my picture...
Thank you to this couple (boy using the girl as a pillow) for not moving - or thanks to the hot weather maybe.
After the Pavilion Gardens we hot-footed to the life-drawing studio for 1.5 hours with a model... fun as ever. I will have to scan a picture from that separately. And then finally in a cafe, we all passed our sketchbooks around. Here are two of us:
A final thought: we might come on a Sketchcrawl hoping to get some good pictures out of it. For me, I very rarely finish up with even one picture I'm truly pleased with. But I do find that I've spent the day with very agreeable people, and that time has just flown. I find that everyone, young and old, is happy to speak to one another, and is so generous with their knowledge and their praise. It's the cheapest way I know of having a darn good time.
Oh, and a note about these forums. I wonder if there's any plan to reconsider the platform they are on. Several folk on the Brighton crawl find it too hard to understand (despite the instructions) how to add images, so... they don't. There must be easier forums?
