Boston and Marblehead Sketches

I didn't get a lot of time to sketch in Boston or Marblehead - we explored and wandered so actively for the 7 days we were in MA. But my little moleskine ("Poco Uno" as it says inside the front cover = so it won't get confused with "Grande Uno") was in my back pocket a lot. The first sketch here was from Marblehead - I sat on a bench in the street near our rented house and drew this (in pen) to remember the place by. The owner of the garden store next to the bench came out to sit and see what I had drawn, and told me the best restaurants in Marblehead. We had already dined at one (The Barnacle).

The next three are rapid pencil sketches done on Memorial day in Columbus Park, near the Aquarium. I loved the Aquarium, particularly the cuttle fish, the penguins, and the four storey tank, but the crowds finally roused my claustrophobia, and I had to go outside without finishing everything. So I let the others meet me later by cell phone connection, and I wandered out into the sunshine and sketched what I could. People sit still for surprisingly short spells - it's hard to have time to catch anything. The guitar player was better than most, because he played four upbeat songs from the 60s and 70s before getting up to leave.

The last sketch is a longer study in Grande Uno, my larger moleskine, and is of the Marblehead Harbor. Local teenagers were pushing each other off the floating dock below me, and the boats had increased all week in the harbor until there were probably several hundred spread from Crocker Park, where this was drawn, all the way over to the neck.

The best thing about sketching, to me, is the way the drawings later evoke the place more powerfully than any photograph. It's not the sketch that does this - it's the remembered cumulative time and actions that created it. It puts it more firmly into my memory.

Click any image for a closer view.

I also did a longer drawing in the house - but that's for another post.