Yorkshire Sculpture Park: SketchCrawl Pics

Once again, we were extraordinarily lucky with the weather on Saturday's SketchCrawl. If we'd been out the following day, we'd have been whirled up, Dorothy-style, into hurricane winds, but instead we had a very hot, often sunny day, with only occasional hints of the blustery weather to come. 

It was the perfect setting too: we strolled through the park as a group, stopping for an hour at a time to paint and draw the sculptures in their beautiful surroundings (spot the slacker, far right...). 

I think sculpture is transformed when it's placed outside in the landscape, don't you? The contrast makes it come alive. 


The two paintings at the top are sketches of the same Henry Moore: I felt the need to draw her from both sides, as her position on a hill meant the effect was so different.

The next two are from the visiting Plensa exhibition. I cannot recommend this highly enough - I loved every aspect of it: these fairy-tale tree-huggers; the steel curtain of hanging letters, whose constant tinkling provided a magical soundscape, totally fitting the show; the interactive room with its circle of massive gongs (oh yes!) and of course the various enormous heads (I especially loved the illuminated, porcelain women: each curiously distorted head several feet high, like a female Easter Island). 

You have until February to get there, before the Plensa show finishes (believe me - you don't want to miss it). I could happily have spent all day just sketching that part of the park, but we had to move on after an hour.

At midday, we ate a picnic lunch together then spent the 2nd half of the SketchCrawl down by the river and lake. 

This Caro piece was so huge, I struggled to tackle the whole thing (although Tom did a great job, capturing it from a different angle). I decided to concentrate on the weird juxtaposition of the stark shapes and the softer, more traditional things captured in the negative space:

Our final stop was deep in the undergrowth, next to a silted-up section of the lake, where there is an old boathouse. It's now entirely imprisoned in land, but still has its own shallow pool, where there were some beautiful (but very tricky) reflections to attempt:

As usual, when we were done we relaxed around a table and shared the sketchbooks. This time, as well as the Sheffield stalwarts, people came from all over the region: Chesterfield, Hull, Leeds, Wakefield, Huddersfield. It was great to meet so many new people and get to nosy into lots of new sketchbooks. I was especially excited that my e-friend Andrea Joseph came. I have been admiring the crazy intricacy of her work for a while.

John and Helen, the curator of the YSP, took photos of as many of the sketches as they could. I am posting them in the gallery. Here are what we've done so far.


Thank you so much to everyone who came along to share the day. I hope all the new recruits 
enjoyed themselves and will come again!