5h Avenue Naples

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

My goal today was to go downtown to visit the galleries on 5th and to do a couple of sketches, one in color and another in black and white.  My first attempt was a black and white of some shops across the street from the Sherman Gallery.  I was struck by the negative shapes made by the intersection of palm trees and buildings.  Stripes on awnings always catches my eye as well.  I found a nice shady spot and started drawing.  I was really having fun and got some encouraging comments from passersby when I made a cardinal sin of the sketch artist.  I needed to add a couple of cars at the bottom of the scene.  Unfortunately there so many trucks and cars blocking my way I tried to draw from memory instead of observation.  The lesson relearned was this never works.  It looks like a car crash in the middle of a peaceful street scene.  Of course I can redraw the cars from photos I took at the time (I snapped over 100 photos today), but the charm of the original sketch was botched by my impatience.  My bad.