I met Candace Rardon, very fleetingly, at a travel writing workshop in Corte Madera, California – but little did I know that a couple of years later, her passion for illustration would invoke the artist in me.
I have always identified myself as a drawing room painter, well that sounds like a mouthful, but you get the idea. After installing this site, I decided to spruce up my Instagram account. I came across this community of sketchers @momentsketchers, started by none other than Candace herself.
I had cast myself out of this tribe, even before I joined it, but a sneak peek into the posts revealed sketches by artists with a wide variety of skills. It was definitely not as basic as splashing paint on paper, but it was also not something that required you to be all professional or nothing. With nothing to lose, I took the plunge and was soon swimming in a sea full of weekend warriors, delightfully dipping their fins in watercolors in a bid to capture a moment in their respective neighborhoods.
As soon as I joined, I found myself opting into the postcard exchange event. I was to paint a postcard and snail mail it to another member of the community, so that it would arrive in their mailbox around Valentine’s day. The brains behind this event paired me with Lady D from Australia. Oh what joy it was to create my first watercolor sketch of a moment in the Love Park in Philadelphia as well as hand-paint a postcard – another tribute to the LOVE statue installation at the park – and ship it off to Down and Under to my very first brushpal. It was a very emotional experience.
There is clearly a hidden treasure trove of talent in this community. But @momentsketchers, I have learned that an aspiring sketch artist, must embrace the motto that the process is more important than the outcome.
