Urban Sketchers June

We had glorious weather for our June sketch meeting today.  Our venue was the small Wiltshire town of Cricklade - the first town situated on the River Thames as it flows, from its source, towards London.  Just outside the town are the water meadows which are famous for an extensive display of snake's head fritillaries in April.  A previous post gives details of the artists' book I made about this beautiful wild flower location.

Today, most of us opted to sketch in the tranquil surroundings of St. Sampson's Church.

Trying out a suggestion by (Karen Stamper) which I recently found on on the internet, I pre-prepared two pages of my watercolour Moleskine.  Torn strips of masking tape, labels, etc. were added, followed by random washes of Indian ink, walnut ink, a little orange fluid acrylic and areas of white gesso scraped on with a credit card.

Some of the masking tape has been removed, but a couple of the labels
threatened to tear the paper surface, so they were left in place

I chose to record this corner of the churchyard

A somewhat messy outcome (and a missing gable window!),
but a fun experiment

I used a fine liner pen, burnt sienna watercolour marker, black Pentel brush pen, watercolour, white gouache and oil pastels.  I'm not sure I will adopt the masking tape and label idea, but the dark background encouraged me to be bolder with my sketching in an attempt to bring the image out of the chaos.