When you're learning a new skill, such as drawing, you've got to be prepared to fail every now and again. Obviously it's nice to believe that every picture can be rescued to some degree but sometimes you've just got to take the hit and move on. So today I really couldn't find a nice quiet place to draw and so, in some desperation, I decided that really it's possible to make a purse out of any pig's ear and settled on this concrete planter because it had some interesting texture:
Now beyond the subject itself I also had the slight problem that the sky kept trying to rain on me. At first it was just a few drops and so I plugged away: trying to get the basic shapes right and then moving onto shading and adding body to the picture. This went reasonably well for a while but then a fine rain really started and I realised that you just can't draw in these circumstances; it's not so much that the paper gets wet but that the pencil stops making marks because it just slides over the slick surface. Anyway I did make it to a certain point:
So what's the damage? Well without some shadow or background to provide context it's hard to tell what the picture is all about. Some of the shading is nice but I didn't get a chance to smooth it out and add some useful depth. I still think that all practice has some value but the lesson here, for me, is that if you're going to focus on just part of an object then that vignette had better be especially captivating!