One of the first things I did for this project was get myself down to the racecourse on our first free Friday and do some drawing of the track. It is possible to walk all the way around the course which gives good views although you are looking through a three-metre perimeter fence the whole time.
Alas, this day was fated in more ways than one. First, I forgot my meticulously packed pencil case, packed with coloured pencils that I hoped would let me produce some David Hockney style magic. I luckily had my watercolours with me and a black pen. In the event this turned out to be fine and I think limiting the drawing materials available is not a bad idea in any case:
The last drawing is of a man walking his dog (no dog, it was too fast) and a jogger. They look like they are about to jump over the fences!
I took a few things from this exercise:
1: Don't launch straight into drawing a massive scene or something really difficult FIRST (I tried to draw the grandstand initially and got a bit bogged down)
2: It is good to focus on small elements or 'frame' landscape-style scenes if you can
3: The 'props' of the racecourse - see the jumps in the final drawing) are worth focusing on in themselves and might prove useful to give context and sense of 'place' to images in the future.
Back to the fated bit. For some reason, I decided to carry a bottle of soy sauce in my bag the other day along with all my sketchbooks and pencils etc. Bad idea and this book suffered the most - it got saturated with the stuff, I had to wash my bag and everything, TOTAL DISASTER:
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