Saturday sketchcrawl in Mylapore

No, I don't mean last saturday. This was actually 3 weeks ago and since then I've sunk into a bloggers black hole. Work and travel. But 3 saturdays ago I did something very exciting. I was approached through my blog by Uma, who is a fellow urban sketcher right here in Madras. We fixed up to meet at three in the evening and we were blessed with a cloudy day. 

Now all outdoor sketchers from other parts of the world will go huh?!! at this point but if it had been sunny we wouldn't have lasted half an hour at 3 pm. As it was, the shadows weren't crisp but we lasted 4 hours walking around Mylapore temple lugging our sketchbooks and paints around. We had fixed up to meet at the eastern entrance to the temple. The main doors were shut and would only open at 4 so we walked around the area and then realised that our first rendezvous point had a shady spot on the front steps of someone's house.

While waiting for the temple to open, the flower sellers were setting up their baskets and stalls, worshippers parked and went off to deposit their footwear in the booth and the owner of the house started washing her front steps making me jump sideways and mess up the perspective of the car.

Then the temple opened and in we went Again we made a beeline to a shady spot. The flagstones were hot even on a cloudy day and I did these two sketches from the same spot. By six thirty we were both thirsty and tired from the heat. Uma had the stamina for one more sketch sowe walked across to the other side of the enclosure and I just chatted with her while she captured the long dance hall on the southern side. Sketching with another person was so much fun and we hope to do more saturdays soon. I wish Madras had weather like Bangalore.