37th World Wide Sketchcrawl

 This is the first World Wide Sketchcrawl that I have been to and it was a lot of fun.  Of course, since I travel by bus I was up at 7am to catch the first bus by 8am(which never came).  I was forced to walk to the other route and catch that one.  It was well below 40 degrees when I left home.  So by the time I got to the bus stop I was freezing.  But, I still got downtown on time for my transfer.  I was the first to arrive at Village Gate Center to meet everyone else at the Dark Horse Coffee Shop.  By the time I got there I needed the coffee and something to eat.  Others were getting there as I was waiting for my order.  After getting what I needed I joined the group to help pull together tables.  At first we spent the time sharing our sketch books and supplies.  Two of those there had been to the Urban Sketchers International Symposium in Santo Domingo.  So they talked about everything they did there.  It was still cold out so we worked for an hour and a half in the shop. However, at some point someone suggested we head outside since it had warmed up.  It took a while to gather up all our stuff.  We setup across the street in the sun and did 

 another hour of work out there.  The top sketch was of the coordinator of this groups sketchcrawl.  She was Zoned out for a while drawing a funky looking bench.  I got the same bench below in the street scene of Goodman ave.  It also seemded to be the time of day for all the local residents to walk their dogs.  It was a steady stream of them back and forth.  At one point I stood up to look away from the sun to give my eyes a rest.  That is when I saw one man walking a tiny dog through a tunnel of trees.  I quickly threw down the sketch you see below.  Someone mentioned lunch and we all crossed back over to go to Selenas' Mexican

 Restaurant.  I was funny watching 6 people around the table talking and drawing instead of eating.  What a great way to loose weight.  Draw the food don't eat it.  Finally we decided to walk down to the Memorial Art Gallery(the local art museum).  We only had a few minutes there but I did concentrate on the buildings' tower.  Very intricate and this drawing doesn't do it justice.  Will have to go back and redo that at a later date.  We all broke up at that point and went our own way.  It was great getting to know new people and fellow artists.  The network circle keeps growing.