West Side Market . . . a great crawl ! !

So January's installment lead us to the West Side Market in Ohio City on a cold, bright Saturday morning. There was a large crowd (which I have conveniently avoided putting in my drawing . . . New Years resolution opportunity - learn to draw people) of shoppers throughout the market. I had trouble finding Josh and the group, mostly because I hadn't read the e-mail carefully. Eventually connected though and off we went our separate ways.

Sketching in a crowd, standing up, adding watercolors (even with the excellent Jet Pens) proved a new challenge. Also picking out specific elements to draw in the visual cacophony of sights . . . all a bit mind boggling. But the 10 + of us who showed up all gave it a shot. It was nice getting together a couple of times during the session to share ideas and perspectives with each other.

I learned there is a balcony (which I never realized) and although somewhat crowded as well, it gave a unique perspective on the space. Since I already had my "long shot" of the market, I went downstairs for the second half and drew individual items of interest. I'm not sure the shop owners appreciated it, and I'm sure the other shoppers didn't. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, but that's not easy for a guy my size.

After the crawl, we all stood around and shared our sketches. Josh said mine was a "fair representation" of what the market looks like . . . at 7:00 in the morning (before the people come in). Yeah, I gotta work on that. It was a great crawl and afterwards, he took us around the corner to "The Glass Bubble Project", which is a cool little artisan glass blowing shop tucked behind the market in an out of the way corner. Another fun discovery and successful sketchcrawl. Next month, down to the Theater District . . . can't wait!