Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Sheltering from the rain under the Pavillion

We've been back home from Canada for a month now and since then I have largely taken a break from sketching.

Tuesday was my birthday in addition to it being the Battle of Britain Day. Usually I really enjoy my birthday but this year I didn't. I found the whole day to be emotional gruelling and a bit of a slog. This is because the next day, 16 September, was my mum's birthday and she died just over a year ago so I spent the day mourning her absence.

I decided not to spend the day moping around at home and went by bus to visit the Dalston Eastern Curve garden which I have visited before but not for a long time even though it was a rainy old day. This is a thriving community garden that has been formed from on the old Eastern Curve railway line and is a delightful spot to spend a few hours even when it's cold and wet.

I sheltered underneath the Pavillion which was designed and built by a French architectural collective called EXY2T in spring 2010 while I drank tea and ate cake. I took my usual collection of sketchbooks, water soluble pencils and ink pens with me and I chose to concentrate on the view above and I thought I was mostly concentrating on the foliage.

I realised while I was drawing the table that I had got the perspective wrong and this meant I couldn't include all of the table that I could actually see. What I didn't realise until I got home was that the table was dominating the entire composition. I would have preferred to have an equal balance of table and plants but I couldn't see that until I got away from the view. I feel quite critical of this sketch but am glad that I have restarted sketching and hope that my results are more successful when I visit Freightliner's farm in Islington with the Islington Art Society next week.