Urban Sketchers S.F. Bay Area

SF Sketchers went to the Presidio yesterday to sketch two of the Andy Goldsworthy installations there.

I sometimes wonder whether it's a good idea to sketch someone else's art, whether that keeps me from responding fully to the scene in front of me because it's filtered through someone else's vision. But in this case the sketching was a great idea because it got me to sit down and really pay attention to his work and experience the scene fully. 

I think that if I hadn't been sketching I would have spent about two minutes looking at it,  thinking it was clever to have that line of downed trees snaking through the woods, and then would have moved on. But sketching it pushed me deeper into the experience, and I ended up excited and inspired.

Here's Goldsworthy's "Wood Line"

and "Tree Fall", a large tree trunk coated with cracked adobe, inside the Powder Magazine building.

And here's one of the group sitting on a broken cannon where she could get a little warmth from the old iron. It was so windy and cold that the Off-the-Grid picnic that I had planned didn't work out, but a hew hardy souls hung around to keep sketching anyway.