Sandbox Montage

I miss the Urban Sketchers in New York, but Monday night turns out to be a really good night for sketching in Corvallis! The Sandbox Session gives me something to look forward to all day, and Mondays are not my favorite… So here is a sampler of the results I like best, cobbled together in Photoshop because they make a rather nice composition… and because I have such fun with Photoshop!

There was a good turnout again upstairs at the Laughing Planet, with the addition of a young fiddler to the Sandbox Musicians, and a nice little breeze through the open French Doors.  I think the trick to sketching musicians involves several basic steps:  1) get there early for the best seat and get your glass of wine before you go upstairs; and  2) start fast, move your hands with the beat, be prepared to flip to a new page when they put down one instrument and pick up another, then flip back when/if they go back to the first instrument.  I constantly remind myself that the main point of a sketching session is to see, listen, experiment, learn, and enjoy, and that it doesn’t matter how much paper I use – learning is never a waste.

Oh yes, and 3) fill your water brush before you go, because you won’t want to take time to mess with it after things get going.  Once I quit mentally fussing every time they moved – which evidently happens nonstop with jazz musicians – I relaxed, and realized that my pulse was literally keeping the beat.  Slow beat, slow pulse; pick it up,  my heart is rockin’ out!  I hope the fiddler comes back again, my notes about needing more study are about me, not him – he’s a master already, but I definitely need to practice because I did not do justice to the lovely scrolls carved into the wood and the movements of the fiddle.