The Houston Farmer's Market

The Group

 The Houston Farmer's Market has been one of our sketching venues before. Back when it was Canino's, it was a riot of color and smells. Could the new, rebuilt market still excite us? Well, we needn't have worried. The beautiful new space has many of the same vendors, booths crammed with merchandise and tempting produce, and the thrum of busy shoppers. Our turnout was great. The only dilemma was how to capture it all on the page. Francisco's sketch, which you can see on our masthead, is the outside of the beautiful new building, with a nod to its use.

Arthur

Arthur Deatly brought his easel. He likes to work in water-soluble graphite and watercolor.

Jenna

Jenna's sketches show exactly what we were up against. How do you get all the produce, the shelving, the people that are crammed into every space? Well, you invariably have to simplify just a bit. The colorful background on the top sketch stands in for an even busier background.

Carlos Chua

Carlos also captured just enough to "read" as fruits and vegetables but he used simple watercolor shapes to represent all the produce.

Michael settled onto his stool and let the scenes come to him.

Joel

Joel liked the long view down one side of the narrow vendor corridor that gives you a real sense of the new space.

Chris

I wanted to focus on one vendor space and practice my people-drawing skills.

Bruce

Bruce picked just one section of a booth with an interesting background treatment to fill the space.

Jeff

Jeff simplified by indicating the architecture of the building but focusing on the boxes of produce.

Then there were those who were seduced by all the colors of the produce.

Linda

Linda chose vignettes of several things she saw.

Kathy

Kathy picked one interesting arrangement.

Nancy

Nancy grouped several colorful things in a sort of watercolor/collage approach.

Chris

I went looking for pumpkins (my personal favorite) and I found them! But then I saw all the lovely mangos shining in the sun.

Sometimes just getting it all on the page in the time we have is a challenge. Fahmi and Judith have their own solutions to this problem.

Fahmi

Fahmi sketches on location and goes back with reference photos and watercolor later. She likes to compose her pages with the date, captions, and a bit of writing.

Fahmi

You can see the resulting two-page spread before and after. The border "contains" the image and frames it in the space.

Judith takes a somewhat different approach. First, the bracket on the roof pole makes a handy place for the watercolor kit to rest. It also provides a bit of "cover" when you are drawing people.

Judith captures it all on the spot. Very often she works in watercolor or pencil on site. But she also goes home and pumps up the contrast in Procreate. It avoids the problem of overworking the page in the moment and causing the sketchbook page to buckle or pill.

You can see the "before" and "after" below.

Judith

the throwdown

Of course,  we did the throwdown and the group picture at the end. And that was followed by lunch together at a nearby restaurant.

Next month's sketchout will be in Galveston. The weather should be great and there will be a lot to sketch. If you are a USKHouston sketcher, plan to join us.