This week my toddler was ill and awake at 4am, and so I was also ill and awake at 4am. I’d think she’d gone back to sleep and nod off myself, only to be woken up moments later by questions such as “Mummy, are baby pigs called Guinea pigs?”

So when I went to host the October session of Urban Sketchers Reading, I was feeling a bit wobbly. This quickly came out in my sketching and I decided to just embrace it. Here are some of my wobbly drawings of the (not actually wobbly) things in Reading Museum.

I mostly sat on the first bench I found and just drew whatever was there when I turned my head. At one point I thought “oh rubbish, I can only really see the deers’ bottoms.” But then I just drew their bottoms anyway and actually I kinda really like it. As usual, I drew far too big and went off the paper before I got to the antlers. So I just ripped off another piece of paper and kept on going up. You can just about see the join here if you know it’s there, but it worked better than I expected.

When I wasn’t really feeling it I switched to a quick blind contour. Look at those squishy fawns!

Turning slightly the other way on my adopted bench I could see a collection of rocks. They were captive in various boxes and cages. Some of the boxes had little holes so you could poke the rocks without them biting you. I didn’t do that as I wanted them to sit nice and still while I sketched.

I’d now exhausted the views from my bench and so ventured out into the unknown wilderness. Luckily, there was another bench just round the corner.

I then tottered off to meet back up with the lovely USk group and see what they’d been up to. Despite the torrential downpour, some people had managed to stay outside to draw. Others were clever and drew through café windows while eating cake. Many people stayed in the museum.

And finally, here’s a bonus sketch from a couple of weeks ago through the window of Broad Street Mall. I love the overlapping layers of buildings.

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