Predictions of rain and foul weather proved to have been overblown this weekend, so after yet another trip to buy paint, lights, curtain poles and all those sundries of house-moving that so readily suck up your resources, we set out to enjoy the sun.
At weekends we mostly spend our time walking and taking photos, but this time around we did things differently. First, we swapped our stout walking boots for bikes, and spent both days riding around the miles of cycle paths that thread their way through Chelmsford. And second, we left the cameras at home and headed out instead with sketch pads and soft black pencils.
It made for an idyllic weekend. My favourite thing each day is cycling to the station and back, particularly now that the pollen is out and you find yourself freewheeling through clouds of what looks like feathery confetti. Extending that to a half day ride with no need to get on a train and go to work at the end of it only made things better.
Chelmsford caters so well for cyclists that we were able to get all the way to Writtle, the next town along and the site of the world’s earliest radio broadcasts, without ever using a road. Indeed, we had more trouble steering around the stupid pedestrians who insisted on straying into the cycle lanes and then giving you dark looks when you tried to ride past them.
As for the drawing… well, neither of us had picked up a pencil in two decades, so we should probably have tried something less ambitious than a barge on the water out at Sandford Lock, what with all the reflections, the painted flowers on its side, and the tricky green plants growing in the canal. That aside, I think we both did pretty well. Our perspectives were fair, our shading was consistent, and our proportions were pretty much as they should have been.
That’s not to say the results were good, but they were passable. More practice is certainly called for, and will certainly be given.
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