Day 268 "I Love a Parade" 6 x 9 ink, watercolor, pencils

We watched a local parade today from a friend's yard. She holds a drop-in brunch/parade-watching morning in her yard on the route.  It is great for families, kids table of breakfast outside, table for adults inside.  This is the second time we've gone.  I meet interesting people, watch the parade and the children and the excitement. It's great fun.  I love parades and they always remind me of my Dad.  Last year, we sat by the street in our lawn chairs, but this year, it was too hot!  Our friend thoughtfully had a pop up canopy on the lawn from where we watched in shade along with a couple of nice families with overheated children. The yard has a hedge and gate so it's easy for toddlers to run around, not under the wheels of a float.  
I did the drawing on site at the parade, moving people where I needed them for the design, including the little brothers in matching stripes lower left.  I added watercolor back at home, from my head, then used a little colored pencil and a china white pencil for some accents.  My first thought was to only color the flags, but I rejected that idea, because i had intentionally added a number of flags and it would have been spotty.  I love painting crowds of people, the busyness, the color, the activity.  There's always a lot going on.  I am working on simplifying the shapes and looking at groups of people as  masses rather than individuals.  
I designed this sketch with everyone looking to the right, the biggest flag to the right and a little girl in Dad's arms pointing off the page to the direction the parade is coming from. Rather than leading the viewer's eye off the page, the design brings the viewer's eye there, and then carries it back into the page, where the two little boys are in the opposite corner,  then around through the crowd.  By the way, this is a parade painting without any parade.  It tells the story through the crowd. 
This is my two hundred sixty-eighth daily drawing.  Again, thank you for looking and Happy 4th of July.