sketch of the crowd at the Renoir exhibition and a moleskine sketchbook

A quick sketch of the crowd at the Renoir exhibition - done at the time in biro and coloured later with those Lyra 'skin tones' set of coloured pencils - I really like them :>) - these are on loan from the college I work at but I must buy a set. They have a lovely range of colours from honey, through siennas, cool browns, dark browns, honey and an almost caput mortem - that dead purple (literally dead head in Latin from the colour of corpses!) that's ideal for some shadows.

The tiny lady with the bun at the front I just had to draw! She had so much character, She had a hunched back and this suit with incredibly wide shoulders and that lovely cottage loaf bun hairstyle.

I was exhausted by then, sitting listening to the headphones on the benches and trying work up the energy to move on :>)

Incidentally, this is my first sketch in a moleskine sketchbook - as people kept raving about them I thought I'd try one. On the first page I simply tried out scribbles of the different media I might want to sketch in to see how they worked. Most did. It's no good with willow charcoal though, far too smooth and shiny for it, which makes it scratchy. I decided pencil, charcoal pencil, ink and wash with very little water, ink pen, biro and coloured pencils all worked really well. So far I like it :>). I do like the way it opens so flat, the elastic band to hold it shut, the little pocket for bits and pieces - but a larger size would be nice as I don't usually work as small as even the larger moleskine. I don't like the price! they are rather expensive.