Today I hosted the September meet up of Urban Sketchers Reading. It was a beautiful sunny day and so most of us wandered off around town to find scenes to draw. I started with a coffee van outside the Oracle shopping centre.

It was quite crowded but somehow I forgot to include any people! I think they were all just bustling past so quickly, they didn’t really leave any individual impressions on my mind. My eye just looked past them and traced the outline of the coffee van through the gaps in the crowd. I did add mannequins in the shop window though so it’s not completely lifeless :)

Next I wandered up to the main pedestrianised shopping street and started drawing this toddler carousel ride. I got the front of the little bus down before the ride started spinning and I realised this was going to be trickier than I thought! It was fine though, I just had to catch glimpses as it span. I also moved around to the other side to keep track of the vehicles I was drawing when it stopped again.

This little ride is here every weekend and I’ve drawn it before, but never looked too closely at the vehicles. Some of them are pretty psychedelic!

As always, there were a variety of places and scenes from everyone that came along (though the same exciting twisty tree was drawn from a few different directions.)

We meet somewhere around Reading town centre on the second Saturday of each month, so do drop in if you fancy a bit of sketching in October.