CHATTERIS SURGERY, Cambridgeshire. UK

Made good use of the few minutes I had to wait in the doctors surgery on Friday afternoon. The guy next to me had obviously suffered a much longer wait than I because he actually woke himself up with the noise of his own snoring!

Please don't worry, I am fine, it was a routine appointment.

DJ GARDEN CENTRE, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.

Thursday...My moleskin, sunshine, latte and a fantastic English breakfast shared the morning at DJ's Nurseries...What a way to start the day!

FOOTSTEPS, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. UK

Yesterday morning was spent at 'Footsteps' being pampered then, while I waited for Mum, I borrowed a chair from the waiting room and sat on the opposite side of the road to create the sketch above.

OLD BAKERY CAFE, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. UK

Moleskin sketchbook, ink.

Since it's difficult to position myself across the road from The Old Bakery Cafe to sketch it, I decided to sketch some of the interior while waiting for the Museum to open Wednesday morning.

CROSS KEYS INN, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. UK

A quick sketch of The Cross Keys Inn, sketched from the Old Bakery Cafe late morning yesterday while sipping on a hot milk coffee.

CHATTERIS, Cambridgeshire. UK

Pigment liner and black ink in large moleskin sketchbook

This morning, after taking my eldest into school, I parked up in Chatteris and made my way towards the benches opposite Jubilee Gardens. Here I sat and took in the morning facing a clock and a funeral parlour...A gentle reminder to make the most of every minute perhaps?

13th WW Sketchcrawl - Chatteris Museum

Saturday the 17th marked the date for the 13th Worldwide Sketchcrawl when Artists from all over the world meet up and sketch for the day.

I met up with some members of the Fenland Visual Arts Collective in Chatteris where, thanks to Jenny Furlong, we spent the day sketching in Chatteris Museum. We were also joined by Emma-Jane Rosenberg (E-J from Wet Canvas) Emma-Jane is a warm, friendly woman who fitted right in from the start, we all had a wonderful day together.

Rob Morris kindly supplied hot drinks at his home and a place to lunch (Thankyou Rob!). We stopped by The Old Bakery Cafe on the way there to purchase some delicious cakes.

I decided to use a Hahnemuhle Travel Booklet 9x14cm Portrait. I purchased this from the SAA where, as a member, I paid a mere £1.75 and to my surprise discovered it was a duo pack...That's under 90p each! Each booklet contains 20 pages of unlined 140gsm sketch paper and there is a pocket at the rear of the booklet. The cover is soft and natural in appearance allowing you to write/sketch on it. I thought it would be fun to title the cover and then try to fill half the booklet for this sketchcrawl then turn the booklet over and do the same for the 14th Worldwide sketchcrawl. This meant I had 20, 3.5x 5.5" pages to fill...Quite the challenge but one I am happy to say I achieved!

The booklet performed well with the various media I used throughout the day: Derwent watercolour pencils, Derwent drawing pencils, Lyra portrait coloured pencils, W&N watercolour, Verithin coloured pencils, sepia pitt pen and staedtler pigment liner....although I must stress minimal amounts of water were used, modestly applied with a brush pen.

Here are the results, my day from beginning to end, in sketch:

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Some of the worldwide results can be viewed HERE