Drawing people on the Train: Near Disaster...

You may be wondering why I've not told you how it's going with my new book...

Well, it's mainly because there's been another short delay. My publisher had some new ideas for changes which I wanted to see before I got too stuck into the detailed drawings.  

I've been waiting for final layout sheets to come through, showing their revised ideas about the story's pacing and which text and images they'd like to appear on which pages.  They arrived towards the end of last week, but I haven't made enough progress to show you yet, as I spent most of this week working in Nottingham, rather than in the studio. 

I'll tell you about that another time, but for now, here's a selection of the sketches I did on the train during my 4 days travelling back and forth. Which brings me to my near disaster, first thing Friday morning... 

Five minutes before my train was due, it came up on the departures board as ten minutes late. I phoned ahead to warn them that time might be a bit tight, then decided to pass the 15 minutes doing a quick sketch in the warmth of the platform cafe with a cup of tea. 

But I'd only just got my tea and begun, when the man I was drawing got up to catch a train. Grumbling under my breath, I looked around for someone else to try, only to realise that the man was stepping up onto my train to Nottingham: it was not late at all, but bang on time and getting ready to leave without me! 

I'm sure you can imagine the undignified scrabble which followed: trying to shove sketching gear into handbag, whilst simultaneously grabbing big artwork case and heavy bag of books, then dropping both; shoving escaping books back into heavy bag and trying to grab tea then abandoning it for want of a third hand; finally getting upright with all necessaries, but without the third hand needed to open the cafe door...

I did catch it, thank goodness, so was saved from making that 2nd phone call: 'Hi again. I'm so sorry, but they've now cancelled that train altogether, so it's going to be another half hour. Yes, I know... shocking service, isn't it?'

Sheffield Steel Rollergirls: illuSKATE this!

I took part in yet another brilliant sketching event on Tuesday night. 

Do you remember February's Dr Sketchy event with the bearded ladies in basques? Well, this time it was Sheffield's Roller Derby team, the Sheffield Steel Rollergirls, complete with helmets, pads and skates. 

By 7pm, the back room at The Greystones was heaving with sketchers, pencils at the ready... And we had to be pretty quick off the mark, as we had to squeeze no less than 8 poses into just 2 hours. 

It was even more tricky this time round too, not just because we had only 5, 10 or 15 minutes per sketch (!), but because several poses involved anything up to 5 Roller Girls on stage at once. 

Even though I took an A4 sketchbook, which is big for me, I just couldn't fit it all in, so my friend Les slipped me some emergency A3 paper (cheers Les!).

Another challenge came from the amount of black it their outfits: with black on black in at atmospherically lit room, it was often quite hard to make out shapes and see edges. I enjoyed that though - it influenced my approach and made for looser, more intuitive drawings. 

I do like it when it's a bit hard anyway. I find the extreme concentration exhilarating and I just love the intensity of so many people, so focused: it's like electricity in the room. 

The effect was exaggerated still further this time, by the background music they played while we were drawing: 1970s punk. 

Thank you to all the Rollergirls for some excellent poses. They kept really still too, which is hard to do at the best of times, but even more interesting on wheels I should think! 


Click here to peek inside more of my sketchbooks.
Click here to read my hot tips for drawing people in public places.
Click here for films of me talking about my book illustration work, and why I carry a sketchbook.

Imperial War Museum: SketchCrawl

I fell in love with the Imperial War Museum last month, when I was invited to do a day of illustration workshops there. I really wanted to go back and draw its curious shapes, so we held April's SketchCrawl North day there on Saturday. 20 people came together from all over the region to draw.

The astounding building was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. He created the disorientating, fractured shapes to indicate how the experience of war smashes our world into pieces, which are never quite reassembled the same way afterwards. 

The inside is, if anything, more wild and abstract the the exterior. None of the walls are upright and lighting is used to further exaggerate the effect:

Apparently, during his 'pitch', Libeskind smashed a teapot to smitherines to demonstrate the principle - a great way of focussing the clients' attention!

I was fascinated by the false perspectives and the abstract compositions every way I looked. The only problem for sketching was that every hour the lights went out and various films were projected onto the walls. Very dramatic but very dark!

Just before lunch, I took the lift to the top of the Air Shard. I love high places and it afforded a great view down over the river. Unfortunately it was open to the weather and freezing. I couldn't go down without doing one quick sketch though.

We had a late lunch so the museum's cafe wouldn't be too full. Several people who'd finished eating, began sketching at the table. Many of us took the opportunity to sneak a look at other people's books. Then I climbed onto the windowsill and painted the bridge outside. I'm too impatient to wait for my watercolour to dry though, so I worked on 2 sketches at once:

You can see the sketches I did on the train coming home in the Picture Gallery and other people's sketches are posted in SketchCrawl North. If you live in the north of England and want to join us on a future SketchCrawl, why not join the Facebook group or email me and I'll add you to my mailing list. 

Class Two at the Zoo Assembly: Anaconda Eats Reception Class!

I had a great email just before Easter, which really made me smile. It was a letter from Mrs Dobson's Reception Class at Sir John Barrow School in Cumbria, telling me about their school assembly, and the 'ginormous anaconda' they made from a gigantic box and an awful lot of papier mache. 

As you can see from these wonderful photos, they staged a re-enactment of Class Two at the Zoo. Mrs Dobson and the Reception children built the snake with the somewhat wet and slippery help of Nursery, and the steadier, guiding hand of the anaconda's Technician-in-Chief and Senior Designer, the fantastic Mrs Wilkinson (...huge round of applause, please)! 

There were two grand performances, firstly for all the families who were invited in specially, then a reprise for the WHOLE SCHOOL! Everyone were deeply impressed, as you can imagine. All the other children were desperately jealous and so Reception let Y1 and Y2 take goes at being eaten. Even a couple of teachers sneaked a turn!

This is Mrs W shrieking with horror, as yet another poor child is gobbled up whole! You can see from this rare shot inside the gullet of an anaconda, mid-munch, how clever she was, creating something big and robust enough to do the job:

Thank you so much to Mrs Dobson for forwarding me the children's letters and all the photos, and a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Reception Class for what sounds like an amazing assembly - quite possibly the best assembly in the whole world, ever! A copy of Class Three all at Sea is on its way to you as a reward for all your hard work.

So, next year's assembly will be about pirates - start thinking Mrs Wilkinson!

 

The Art of Urban Sketching: Spot the Blunder...

Late yesterday afternoon, as the rain hammered down on the studio veluxes and the world seemed a rather dreary place, I received an email from sunnier climes that made me laugh out loud... 

Anyone remember earlier this year, I told you about a book called The Art of Urban Sketching which I'm really proud to have my work in? Well, Alessandro Melillo in Italy was just reading through the copy he'd just bought, when his gaze snagged on one of the images featured on my page, a pencil drawing I did of an old, public swimming bath, not far from where I live:

It's known locally as Heeley Baths. It's still in use and housed in its original building (love the segregated entrances: Victorian prudishness captured in stone). I took care with the carved, stone lettering on the facade, or thought I did...

Spotted it yet..?

Pubic Baths! Great eh? I did the drawing 18 months ago and it's been posted here, on my Flickr site, and on Urban Sketchers, as well as in the book of course, but nobody's ever noticed before, including me!

It's rather ironic, isn't it, that it took an Italian speaker to spot an error in my English?

The Great Sheffield Art Show: Selection Process

On Sunday I woke up to glorious sunshine. Despite that, the edges of the pond were frozen and the wind was really cold. I was (rather selfishly) glad it wasn't too nice, since I was spending a chunk of the day indoors, as one of the judges helping select artwork for this year's Great Sheffield Art Show. 

The exhibition is 25 years old this summer and shows a massive variety of work. Professional artists with a large body of work can rent a space, but the main body of the hall is giving over to the 'open show: a great opportunity for emerging artists. 

The selection process is really interesting. It's done at the weekend, so the organisers can borrow a local school (it needs an awful lot of room). Would-be exhibitors deliver their artwork first thing. A team of volunteers carry it all into the school hall and prop it up against the walls, or on chairs and tables, so everything is visible, but anonymous. When it's all set up, the judges walk round and colour-code the work as 'yes', 'no' or 'maybe'. We work in pairs, starting at opposite ends of the room, so that, when we cross over in the middle, we can moderate the other pair's decisions, drawing attention to anything we strongly disagree with and nudging their 'maybes' one way or other.

Once we have finished, the organisers go in and do a count-up, with an eye on the numbers they need to fill the exhibition space, adding back any extras they think might be especially saleable or popular with the public.

Once the selecting is finalised, we all get treated to a lovely buffet lunch (and a naughty, lunchtime glass of wine): a great opportunity to have a good natter with like-minded people. Last year I stayed and helped all afternoon too, and even did some sketching.

If you want to get involved, they need more volunteers to help with the hanging on June 28th - 1400 pictures need hanging in just 4 hours! They also need stewards during the show. Contact Anne Liddell.

The show open to the public from June 29th - July 1st, from 10am - 6pm (8pm on Friday) at The Octagon Centre in Sheffield. Tickets (on the door) are £4.50 / £4 concessions.

SketchJam: Sheffield Folk Festival

After the fun of the recent SketchJam at the White Lion, Les and I hooked up again and took our sketchbooks to the Shakespeare pub to draw one of the events at the Sheffield Folk Festival. 

It took a while for things to get going, then suddenly the tiny bar exploded into music. Flutes, accordions, squeeze-boxes, a fiddle, a sax, guitars... you name it, they were whipped out of bags and we were soon tapping our toes and warming up our pencils!

Everyone was crammed into such a small space that we quickly got to know our neighbours, some of whom were musicians, some morris dancers. They were all very friendly indeed and, as usual, very interested to see what Les and I were up to! 

Within moments of me explaining, one of our company had found my website on her smartphone and was telling everyone about Baby Goes Baaaaa!.

If you want to see the rest of my sketches, they are in the Picture Gallery. Les has posted his on the SketchCrawl North site. Thanks to all the musicians - a lovely evening!

School Visits: Children's Letters and Drawings

Because of the number of school visits I've been doing recently, I have received lots of nice emails and also some fun parcels from the postman. The parcels were actually more like very fat envelopes and, when I opened them, they were stuffed with lovely letters and drawings from children, thanking me for my visit. 

These illustrations were sent to me by St Nicholas Primary School in Hurst, in Berkshire. Aren't they great? 

We did an illustration workshop, where I showed the children how to use facial expressions to let people know what their character is thinking, then how to dress or accessorise them, to give clues to their age, sex or personality. Next we learnt how to make our characters run really fast, how to create distance and depth in the background and how to use weather to add atmosphere to a picture. The children did a great job and picked it all up really well, as you can see.

Thank you to everyone for all your letters, especially to the Y3 children at Coppice Primary School, who I met in Oldham, during the Picture This! exhibition - they win the prize for the fattest envelope ever!! (Nice snakes by the way). Hope you enjoy reading my reply!

I am so glad everyone enjoyed my visits and found them interesting. It was lovely to meet you all. Don't forget what you have to do to get really good at your drawing... remember..? Yep, you got it... PRACTISE!!





Oh, and if you want some help with drawing either cats or dragons, take a look at these two films I made over Easter...

Baby Goes Baaaaa! - Spotted in Sainsbury's!

John was doing our weekly shopping expedition to our local Sainsbury's last week, while I was getting on with my the roughs for my new book. I was sketching away when the phone rang. "Guess what I'm looking at?" said John. "Baby Goes Baaaaa!"

I got him to take this pic on his mobile: 

It's the first copy of Baby Goes Baaaaa! we've spotted in the shops: that first one is always a bit of a thrill. Especially when it's in Sainsbury's, as this is the first time we've ever come across one of mine in a supermarket. Egmont did tell me they'd taken a load, but it's not the same as seeing it there with your own eyes (well, with John's eyes anyway)!

Starting the Roughs for a New Picture Book

You may remember that many, many moons ago, I took a new story idea down to pitch to my publisher and then finally got the go-ahead last summer. Forgotten? Well, I'm not surprised! People not directly involved in publishing are usually surprised at how slowly these things often move.


I was originally scheduled to start work on these roughs way back before Christmas, but what with one thing and another, both at my end and at the publishers, we have only just got going again.

In some ways it is hard to pick something up after such a long gap and to get back into it, but in other ways it is very useful, as a bit of distance give you fresh eyes on your project and makes you more flexible to any changes needed.

I originally wrote the story on big sheets, combining text and images in a free-flowing way as ideas came to me and showed these to the publisher, rather than try and formalise them first, which worked well. But picture books are a set length, so now things need tweaking to fit the format. 

My editor at Gullane has started the ball rolling, by dividing the text across the pages and roughly pasting in copies of my sketches where she things they work best. I'm now re-working the text slightly, re-drawing here and there and creating any missing images, working towards a proper set of roughs. It's a completely new way of working for me, but so far I'm really liking it.

Once again, I have permission from my publisher to blog the details, so I'll be letting you peek over my shoulder as I get seriously down to work during the next few weeks, just like I did with Bears on the Stairs, Rumble Roar Dinosaur and of course the two new baby books, Baby Goes Baaaaa! and Baby Can Bounce!. 

Carolan Folk Music - SketchJamming

We've not been SketchJamming for ages, so when we heard they had an evening of Carolan music at the White Lion pub just down the road, a few of us decided to head over there. 

For those who've not come across a SketchJam before, it's a term we sketchers invented for a live music SketchCrawl. 

It's great fun drawing to music but can be quite a challenge, as of course musicians are inclined to move about! The harp and whistle players below were a gift though, as they kept very still, though the songs didn't last long, so it was still a bit of a race:

Another thing I particularly like about SketchJamming in the informal setting of a pub, especially if, as on this occasion, it is a fairly small and casual gathering, is the way it becomes a general experience of sharing, making contact between two different forms of creative expression.

The musicians were just as interested in us as we were in them. Trouble was, I kept losing my sketchbook, while various musicians took turns to have a look through it!

If any of the Carolan musicians find their way here, I'd like to say thank you for a lovely evening of beautiful, haunting music. Hope to see you again some time.

How to Draw Cats and Dragons: 2 New Films!

I have been working poor John really hard over the past couple of months (I bought a new whip...). He's the one who's had to deal with all the emails and calls getting things sorted for the 30 (!!) different school and festival visits I've done recently, as well as booking all my trains, writing all the invoices, doing all the other admin mounting up at the studio... What a hero. 

And the boy done good: I always ended up in the right place on the right day (phew) and everything has gone pretty much like clockwork. I don't think I could have managed such an unusually busy season without his help, so a big THANK YOU to John (cue applause...).

Anyway, I've let him off boring-duties for a while and he has been trying something a bit more fun: he's been making films! After last year's meeting with Shoo Rayner, the avid YouTube film-maker, John has been keen to have a go himself.

He decided to concentrate on how-to-draw films, as we already have plenty of interview-style ones on the website. Since I've been doing a fair bit of dragon-drawing during my recent school workshops, that seemed an easy place to start, as no real planning would be needed.

It took a while to get everything set up right. We don't have any fancy kit - we just used John's camera and mine at the same time set up on a couple of tripods (to get 2 different views, to cut between later). Then we just went for it. I'm so used to talking about my work now, I just decided to say what came naturally and hope for the best!

Making the dragon film was such fun, we immediately started work on a 2nd one, this time about drawing cats. We chose a cat next because I've noticed that an old blog post of mine, Drawing a Cat, has had nearly 13,000 views in under 2 years: 4 times more than any other.

Since there is a very cute cat in Baby Goes Baaaaa!, it made most sense to promote the new book by focussing on her. She's not to tricky to draw, as her position is reasonably simple and works without a background or other characters to interact with. 

Take a look at both films for me and let me know what you think. Any feedback would be very useful as John's already planning the next one!

As we create new films, we will upload them to my YouTube channel. I am also in the process of redesigning my main website to add new learning resources for kids and grown-ups, including more 'how-to' films, as well as direct links to the specific 'hot-tips' articles I have written here in the past. Watch this space..!

Hockney at the Royal Academy

Last week, John and I took the train down to London for a couple of days. You might have noticed that we've had several brilliant trips out recently. I am rewarding myself for working so hard over the last month and doing 22 days of workshops, talks or school visits out of 31! Pretty full-on: fun but exhausting, especially with all the travelling about. 

We've been especially lucky with how this bit of 'reward' time has coincided with a heat wave. It seemed wicked to spent too much time inside, so we took the boat down the Thames to Greenwich, where we pottered and chilled.

Next morning though, we spurned the sun, leaped on the tube and got down to the real business of the trip: the Hockney exhibition at the RA. I've been so looking forward to it since we booked the tickets back in January.

I was not disappointed. I haven't felt so inspired and uplifted by an exhibition in as long as I can remember (OK, I know with my memory that's not as long as all that, but hey...).

I wandered back and forth between the rooms for a full 3 hours, with a ridiculous ear-to-ear grin on my face throughout. I soaked up every painting, every page of every sketchbook, every last second in the remarkable, film-painting room. 

I have always loved Hockney's work, but this new collection of Yorkshire landscapes seems such a celebration of life in colour and light. Whether it's the oil paintings, the big iPad prints, his watercolours or the beautifully delicate, charcoal studies: everything is bursting with the pure, obsessive joy of creativity.

Later in the afternoon, we did some more chilling out in Regent's Park and I of course had to get the sketchbook out. Paltry attempts beside such a master, but I enjoyed myself. 'So, are you going to be drawing in the Hockney-style from now on?' said John, just before I poked him in the eye...

All good things come to an end and we travelled back to Sheffield that evening on the train. I tried to draw John, but his eyes are too close together, because he wouldn't sit still!