38th International SketchCrawl - slurping, munching & sketching our way around Sheffield City Centre

It was touch and go whether Saturday's SketchCrawl would happen: the snow was several inches thick the night before. Luckily it got no worse overnight, so John and I put our boots on and walked into town. Some SketchCrawl North regulars, living outside Sheffield, were upset that they couldn't get to us, but we still had a great turn-out: 22 I think. One person made it all the way from Loughborough.

We started off with a very leisurely sketch session over coffee at Cafe Nero in town. We sat upstairs, where you get some great views out over St Paul's Square to the town hall and the Winter Gardens, but I felt more in the mood for drawing people:

I had a few things to deal with that morning, so my sketches were all quick-fire ones, done in between phone calls. Just as well as, every time I chose a victim to draw, they finished their own sketch and changed position to draw something else!

We moved to the Millennium Galleries for the 2nd half of the morning, to give us a break from coffee. There is a good landscape painting exhibition on at the moment, Force of Nature. I'm a landscape sketcher at heart, so found it very inspiring, especially an Elizabeth Blackadder piece. There was a nice Graham Sutherland too, but it was in black and white, so I imagined what it might have looked like in colour:

Then it was time for lunch. We booked a couple of tables at the Frog and Parrot bar, where the waitress was very patient with us. 

Inspired by Lapin's dinner-table sketches from last year's Urban Sketcher's symposium, I drew the people around me, in fine-liner ink tinted with watercolour:

Our final destination for the end of the afternoon was the Showroom Cafe where I indulged in more coffee and a slice of Bakewell Tart for pudding. Unfortunately, I got so caught up with this watercolour of Debbie, that I completely forgot what I had just bought. By the time I got to it, the coffee was barely luke warm. Hey-ho: you have to suffer for your art. 

As usual, we ended the day by gathering together and passing the sketchbooks round. I do love the sharing bit - it's so exciting to see what other people have done with the same venues and it gives you so many ideas about new techniques to try. 

If you are interested to see some of the other sketcher's work, take a look at our SketchCrawl North page. If you would like to join us some time, we would love to have you. We go out each month, to different places each time, all around the region. Email me to receive my e-newsletter with all the details of future SketchCrawls. Or if you would like to set up a SketchCrawl group of your own, here are some tips.