Sketching on the square

Pen and watercolor in Moleskin sketchbook

A mixture of performance and fine art exhibited in Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa. I attended to see the art of my artist friends and for a leisurely Saturday afternoon of “bench sketching”. The juggler here was entertaining two pre-school age kids while I sat there trying to figure out how to freeze frame the action. As soon as I got the “nerve” to plunge in I discovered that the bench I was sitting on was being used as a step for an energetic teen migration to a spot on the grass behind. So as some lines went astray I struggled to keep my cool. The result is part observation, part invention.

While Badass Barbosa was flinging fluorescent paint at his easel to hip hop music I sneaked back to the other side of the open stage for a better vantage point for sketching. A performance artist they called him. ” I could do that!” I thought. Not that different from plein aire painting with a lot of people around, and you get to do it to music and wear paint splattered clothes and orange sneakers! My artist friend Ryan was hanging out in the sun, looking through a newspaper and toward the stage. Three hours of hip hop music. It got a bit old, but who even cares on such a perfect spring day in the park?