Bike Repair

修车－Bike repair, Beijing style!

It’s taken a little longer than I expected, to get going on my sketching. This sketching is a newish thing for me, but I’d like to think that brevity of participation is no indication of the level of my enthusiasm  : )

The pollution in January didn’t make outdoor sketching pleasant, but thanks to the wind, the weather got better. Only “Very Unhealthy”, instead of “Hazardous”, according to the air pollution index. Then I had another problem to solve when sketching outdoors in winter- cold fingers or losing my grip on my paintbrush by wearing gloves?

As always, James Gurney’s blog is a treasure trove of information, about drawing, painting, and sketching. He had a wonderful post, “Winter Painting Tips”, about plein air painting in winter, including what to do about cold fingers!

Hence on Friday, I bought myself a cheap pair of woolly gloves ($2), snipped off the finger tips, then did a bit of DIY by whip stitching the ends of the now fingerless gloves. I kept my non-drawing hand in the warmer glove, and kept my drawing hand in the fingerless glove.

I’ve been fascinated by those roving bike repair guys in Beijing, with their bicycle carrying a big cupboard full of bits and pieces, to repair bicycles. The big red letters on his cupboard, “修车(bike repair)”, are a dead giveaway. This being the first day of Chinese New Year, bike repairman was of course not around, but his mobile bike repair kit certainly was! So time to whip out the sketchbook and do a quick sketch. I used my Schmincke travelling watercolour kit.

 

I like Schmincke watercolours. They’re pretty saturated, so a little goes a long way. Here’s a longer watercolour study I did about 2 years ago, also with Schmincke watercolours, using local stones that I collected from Blackpool Sands in Devon.  The colours haven’t been Photoshopped, they really are that intense. The rocks were sketched using an old fashioned dip pen, with Winsor & Newton sepia calligraphy ink. This little study got converted to postcard, which I sent to J.