I often do sketching while waiting for things to happen. An artist once said that often when you sketch, some type of drama occurs. And it’s fun when you can capture it too! One place I was waiting recently was at the beach. My daughter wanted to work on her tan, I sat with my mom-in-law in the shade and watched the world go by. Watching young parents with little kids amuses me, because my kids are grown and I can remember being in their shoes. I can remember sitting in the water in the sand, coaxing kids to come in the water, playing in the sand, or trying to get them to come out of the water when the lifeguard blew the whistle. So here are some parents hanging out in the sand, their child was running from the sand and throwing himself into a pool of water they had carved in the sand. Unfortunately, the boy ran too fast for me to sketch him!
I also sketched a couple moms sitting at another lake. Their girls were sitting nearby. I also watched a father and a little boy in the sand near them. The boy jokingly threw sand on the dad, which got him a loud verbal response. He didn’t do that again!
My favorite waiting experience that I sketched was last week. My college-age daughter wanted student football tickets for the games this fall. Everyone was notified when they’d go on sale online, and also aware that they sold out very quickly. Now, my daughter finds it very hard to get up before the double digits in the morning, but these tickets were a hot commodity, so 7 a.m. found her rubbing sleep out of her eyes and mumbling, but getting the computer set up for a 7:30 a.m. online opening. And a laptop. And another laptop. And an iPad. All were set up with the website to get online at 7:30 sharp. (Oh, and her phone was used to SnapChat with her equally sleep-deprived friends out-of-state, to see if they were up and online too.) I found it so amusing to watch–she looked like a serious daytrader with all the computer monitors!
We watched as the sales website opened up and she was put into a virtual waiting room on all 4 devices. A small white walking stick figure moved across a green bar. As you got closer to being allowed in to buy tickets, the green bar would fill up the strip and the cartoon walker would get closer. Eventually, it paid off! She got in, frantically typed in all her information, and BAM! She got her tickets! It was a fun way to capture an everyday ordinary event of waiting.
Many people find waiting for anything boring. But as a sketcher, you can capture some fun moments. What will you sketch while waiting this week?