I enjoy many types of sketching on location, urban sketching, travel journaling, food sketching.

Last week I sketched at three different live events. Here is a summary of the known and unknown elements of each event.

Zoom life drawing online –

known – length of times poses. – there is a standard format. I control my surroundings – at home, so they are controlled, lighting. sound, food. drink.

unknown – poses

These are two of seven sketches from Top Secret Life Drawing online. Theme, the movie Leon: The Professional, a 1994 cult movie

Melbourne Zoo

known – been there before,

unknown – what animals I will see, how long they will stay still – see my zoo blog post

Victorian Historic car racing

Everything was unknown – as a first-time attendee to Victorian Historic Racing at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne.

At this race meeting you could walk (and sketch) just about anywhere

I walked around and got ‘the lay of the land.” I figured out very early that I could not sketch the cars racing on the track – they zoom by too fast! So I stood and watched and enjoyed that. However, I could sketch:

People

• standing, watching, chatting. But like all urban sketching, they will move,
• watching a race they will probably stay in the same place for a certain amount of time

Cars

There were lots of opportunities off the track.

• in the pits as they worked on their cars, before or after a race,
• cars clubs on display
• lining up to go on the track for the next race. – my favourite place to sketch them

I was there from 9:00am to 1:00pm, on a very warm day in Melbourne. After a few hours, I needed to seek shade to stand and sketch. There is a time to listen to your body. I then decided to leave at 1:00pm. The morning was practice laps for the different car types, The afternoon (and the next day) was the racing.

I completed nine pages of sketches and am still completing them now at home. I need to add notes about cars and the races they were in. I want to add colour to some of the pencil sketches. Some of the cars were some very strange paint colours that I could not make up on the day with my watercolour pencils.