Exercise - Drawing on location.

"Use your sketchbooks to produce a series of drawings and notes that documents an event of your choice."
For Drawing the familiar I found the fountain pen worked well to capture figures rapidly as it made a reliable line when I worked quickly, I used the back of the nib to sketch out thin lines then turned it over to make thicker lines when I was happy with the shape. I know that it is more honest to add colour at the scene but I find difficult to manage lots of tools in a public space and forget about colour in my rush to get something down on paper. The sketchbook worked well because I was sitting in one place but was a bit awkward to use on the move in a busy place. Ideally I'm looking for a quiet, reasonably comfortable spot to hide and observe but in reality I think that I need to move around to capture an event.
Every year there is a Halloween street party in Hemel Hempstead Old Town so it was an obvious choice for this exercise. I went in the morning, before the party started to do some preliminary drawings.

I used a concertina folded which I got as a freebie at the Urbansketchers symposium in Manchester which is a slightly tall A6 size. Ink bleeds onto the paper a bit but if I kept the pan moving it was fine. There were a few stallholders setting up but I was too shy to stop and draw them.

Later I sat in a cafe and did this sketch to get myself warmed up, I'm ok if I don't think that people are going to come up and peer over my shoulder before I've got anything meaningful on the page.

People were starting to assemble in fancy dress for the competition, I hid myself against a wall beside a burger van and nobody seemed to notice me.

There was a lot of movement so I found it difficult to get a long enough view of individuals to draw them. The view from above for Drawing the familiar would have been nice for this as I would have longer before they disappeared into the crowd.  On site I just drew, the colour was added when I got home. In the picture above I got a bit carried away with colour, less would have been better....

Here I went into a cafe where I could draw undisturbed but the crowd was getting bigger so it was hard to see individuals. This was the original drawing, I forgot to scan the others before I added colour.

As you can see I kept forgetting to write on the drawings as I made them.

This was far too scribbly and disjointed but adding background colour unified it and I couldn't resist the painting the girl's top.

Similarly, indigo paint made the group of figures on the right into a group instead of a random collection of scribbled figures.
I found it overwhelming to draw in such a busy environment, I get cross with myself for not managing to just draw. I tried to force myself not to panic and scribble, adding colour at home helped to rescue my scribbles. but I wish that I had managed to capture some of the stalls and rides of the funfair. I did take some reference photos but they look so static next to the drawings. I think that a bigger sketchbook would have been easier from a drawing perspective but I would have struggled to manage it in the crowds. I would have liked to return to draw the clearing up afterwards but it was too cold on the day and I started work at 7am the next day.