Sketch of the Week

Today's sketch is from an evening drive I took a few weeks ago.

I'll admit, I'm generally not one to take meandering drives with no particular destination in mind. Part of that comes from the fact that I've never owned a car until now; I'm not used to having a vehicle at my disposal, regardless of the day or time. I'm also ambivalent about car culture, because I consider autos to be a polluting, costly, isolation-inducing necessity, not a pleasure, but hey, that's my opinion.

That said, sometimes you need to get out of town, so after work one evening I hopped in my car and started driving east. After about 40 minutes or so I noticed a someone taking a picture on the other side of the road, so I stopped, got out, and saw something like this:



I was so taken with the lurid, almost hallucinatory colors reflecting off that little pond that I decided to start sketching. Since the sun was setting, the scene I was drawing was constantly changing, so like many of my sketches, what I'm recording is a compilation of moments rather than a single one. Originally I had drawn in some telephone wires, but these got washed out as I began applying color in earnest. I thought about putting them back in, but ultimately omitted them because I rather liked the primordial feel of the overall scene. Eventually I returned home, but it felt nice to get out of town for a little while.

Perhaps I should go out driving more often.

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