31st Derbyshire Open Exhibition - Disaster, Disaster...

I have been doing a bit more painting lately. As you know, I am heavily into my sketchbooks but, for the first time, I am really feeling the urge to produce larger pieces, paintings which I can work on in the studio, when the weather's not good enough to be out on location.

I've managed to grab the odd day out, sketching in Derbyshire, and have been having a go at working from those sketches, experimenting with how different art materials work on a larger format:

It's early days and I wasn't intending to do anything with my efforts yet, then a friend told me that the Derbyshire Open Exhibition was looking for artwork on a Derbyshire theme. I was very pleased with the piece below, based on a sketch done on the Longshaw Estate earlier this year, so I thought I might as well go for it. Unfortunately, the submission deadline was only a week away!

I didn't have time to search a ready-made frame down, so I got a local framer to make one to fit but, to save a bit of cash, we opted to mount the work ourselves.

But - DISASTER!! - the framer made it at the wrong size. Worse still, we didn't notice, until John starting cutting the mount board, on the very morning we were due to deliver the painting to Buxton! The framer made a rush replacement for us to pick up within the hour (phew) so, just after lunch, we breathed a sign of relief and got ready to set off, when - ANOTHER DISASTER!! - I realised I hadn't read the submission instructions properly and the frames needed mirror plates fitted, rather than wire.

By the time we had found somewhere to buy mirror plates, shot over there in the car, then undone the wire and screwed on the plates, it was pretty tight. Buxton is about an hour's run. It was 3.15 and submissions closed at 4.30. But the traffic took pity on us and was light, so we made it with 20 minutes to spare - hurrah!

My painting is for sale so, if you want to own one of the very first Lynne Chapman non-sketchbook paintings, get yourself over to the Buxton Art Gallery. The show opened last night and is on until September 6th.

Dr Sketchy: an Evening of Fairytales

It was Dr Sketchy night last week and the theme was fairytales. For those who don't know, Dr Sketchy is an evening of fun sketching in the back room of a pub: it's a bit like life drawing, but after the models have all raided a dressing-up box! 

In case anyone is wondering, these sketches were all done in an A3 sketchbook using a combination of watercolour and watercolour pencils, with black conte to get the oomph needed for the wicked queen's black dress.

I love the fact that I get to meet new fellow sketchers every time I go to a Dr Sketchy night. We don't have any time to chat while we are sketching, it's way too full-on, but afterwards, knots of people gather round to look at each other's sketchbooks. This time, I unexpectedly met two Facebook friends in the flesh for the first time.

There is always music chosen to fit the theme. I always enjoy drawing to music; it helps to diffuse the intensity, because it really is incredibly focussed. You can't waste a moment. We had 7 poses in 2 hours, between 5 mins and 25 mins each. A non-sketching friend who came along to watch once, said they could feel the intense concentration so much, it was actually oppressive! I am certainly always exhausted afterwards. 

At this last session, we drew Red Riding Hood and a sinister woodman, but the star of the show was definitely the wicked queen. I won a prize for the drawing below (every so often, the models get to choose their favourite sketch from the pose, so I was chuffed that Lara Gothique chose mine). 

While Lara and I were having our photo taken together, she confessed that she was absolutely dying in that outfit. I was not surprised - it was incredibly hot and we sketchers were all melting in far skimpier outfits.

Thanks to all the models and to the organisers for another brilliant evening. If you fancy having a go at something similar, do a search - there might well be a Dr Sketchy in your area.

Mural Design - Print Samples

The postman delivered another of his exciting parcels: the sample prints for the children's library mural:

The design is obviously still printed at a much reduced scale, so we wouldn't need such a big area to see different colours.

You may remember me saying that I am not painting the mural directly onto the wall, but that it will be printed onto special, heavy-duty 'wallpaper'. There were 4 possible textures to choose from, so the printer took the left hand end of the artwork and printed it onto each of the papers. One is totally smooth, the other three have different surfaces:

For some reason, the smooth paper makes the colours far sharper and brighter, so that was the obvious best choice. There was a nervous moment, when the library management had to do costings and find out if the smooth paper was much more expensive, but it turned out to be the same price (phew), so that's what we are going for.

Broomhill Festival SketchCrawl

Last Saturday, I ran a special SketchCrawl in Sheffield's Botanical Gardens. It was part of the local Broomhill Festival and, instead of my regular SketchCrawl North chums, the idea was to attract newcomers, people less used to the idea of location sketching.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Despite grim forecasts, it was warm and dry and not even windy: perfect for sitting around on the grass, drawing together. It made for a very relaxed and comfy introduction for the sketchers who came along to join in. 

We began with a chat. I shared some hot tips for drawing outdoors (like carrying a walker's, foam  sitting-mat, for a warm, dry bum and using elastic bands to tether your book pages, in case it's breezy) and I talked them through my art kit, demonstrating my favourite materials (Inktense pencils, graphite stick, calligraphy pen...) I also took along a few of my sketchbooks to help inspire them, as well as some tins of coloured pencils and watercolour pencils (thanks to Derwent for the sponsorship!) to help encourage them to use colour and not just regular pencils.

Then we headed out into the gardens and sketched the afternoon away. Simon Clements, another local artist and one of the organisers of the festival, joined us. That was great because not only did he inspire us all with his lovely work, but he has a very interesting technique of painting with water-soluble Neocolors: he melts blobs of the different colours onto a stiff, card palette, which he can then tuck into his sketchbook like a bookmark and use like a watercolour set - compact and ingenious!

I did a little bit of drawing with the others, but then worked my way round, chatting to each person in turn, offering advice and encouragement where it was needed.

We gathered together at the end, to share our work. Everyone had done lovely sketches and had experimented with the different materials. They all seemed to have a good time and quite a few said they would like to join me for some of our regular SketchCrawl outings, which would be lovely!

The Library Mural is Finished!

I finished the artwork for the mural last week. Hurrah! 

It took a lot longer than I had bargained for, but I am a bit of a perfectionist and couldn't help myself spending ages on detail, like doing more colouring-in on the original children's drawings and making the scanned cut-out of each one just right. I'm really pleased with how the photo montage bookshelves and computer screens look (spot the shameless self-publicity btw...).

Here it is in two halves, so you can see it more clearly:

The rough was passed with only the most minor changes - I needed to get more cultural diversity into the characters (the children all drew white librarians). I managed to colour a couple of librarians differently, like this one on the far left:

I also included a couple of children from my artwork, one Chinese girl and an Asian boy:

The other thing main thing they asked me to do was change 'Shhhhhh!' from this child's drawing, which doesn't fit with the modern library's ethos, to 'No breathing fire!':

Because of the limitations of my computer and to keep the file sizes sensible for sending, I had to send the artwork in 5 sections, with a good, healthy overlap, so the printer could stitch them together at his end.

Can't wait to see it. I hope the children recognise their drawings!

Drawing with Inktense Watercolour Pencils

John and I have just uploaded a new film, of me doing the drawing above.

People have been asking about the Inktense watercolour pencils which I use so much for my location-sketching, so I thought a filmed demonstration would be useful. I have added a commentary, talking you through what I am doing and why. 

I wanted to do an urban sketch next, having done a rural one last, but drawing down on the pavement on a busy high street can be a bit daunting and would be especially tricky for filming. However, during a SketchCrawl at Broomhill, I discovered that Costa Coffee has huge, upstairs windows which look down over the main street: a perfect vantage point for sketching. John and I went back there to shoot this film. We chose a weekday, when the upstairs of the coffee shop was not at all busy, so it worked out well.

I how you enjoy the film and find it useful. If you want more handy hints on using the watercolour pencils, read this post, which goes into even more detail, for people who have not tried them before.

There are a lot of other short films on my website, where you can also see all my sketchbooks. 

Photography in Sheffield Central Children's Library

I had a big problem with the mural artwork: how to do the bookshelves. I needed bookshelves to make it look like a library, but they had to be filled with books. I didn't have time to illustrate all those spines, so photo-montage seemed the obvious answer.

I originally thought I could scan in the spines of books from my bookshelves, then place them into the illustrated bookshelves in the design as above. This quickly proved impossible: picture books were way too skinny, I would have needed hundreds to fill the shelves and it was way to time consuming.

Then John came up with a different idea: we could photograph existing bookshelves instead. So I phoned Sheffield Children's Library. They were great (thanks Alexis!). They let us in early, before the library opened and were very patient with us creating chaos, moving books around, so we could get the ones I wanted in the photographs. I was mostly weeding out the black spines.

It was still far more tricky than we thought though: the library's protective, plastic jackets on the books reflected the light, so it took John ages to get his lights and camera angled correctly to minimise reflections.

Back in the studio, I took individual rows of books, cut them out in Photoshop, then used the 'distort' feature to angle them, so each row of books exactly fitted the crazy perspective of the shelves in the illustration: 

Job done (phew!).

SketchCrawl in Derbyshire

We had fabulous weather for Saturday's Sketchcrawl. It was so relaxing, sitting in the sunshine, drawing with my sketch-chums. We started at New Mills in the morning, drawing from the Millennium Walkway, which winds along one side of a deep gorge, opposite a crumbly old mill:

At the bottom, in the trees, is a river. I spent quite a while trying to capture the light and shade with my watercolours although, typically, I think the quick sketches above are far more successful: 

After lunch, we moved on to Whaley Bridge, where there was the Water Weekend festival. It was brilliant for drawing - so much to choose from, I hardly knew where to begin. I had a go at these morris dancers: 

...then a massive steam engine arrived and parked up, so I spent a while drawing that:

I got really overheated, as I was in full sun the whole time. I had suncream on, so I didn't burn, but I was concentrating so hard on the drawing, I didn't notice I was sweltering until I finished.

Two fellow SketchCrawlers were nearby, drawing in the shade of a tree, so I hurried to join them, to cool down a bit. We all sat in a row and sketched this man. He looked like he would be pretty still, but he turned out to be a bit of a wriggler!

He kept asking us what the time was. It turned out that he was the Punch and Judy man and his next show was about to start, so we stayed and drew that. I think this is my favourite sketch from the day. I was in the perfect position to get the puppets and the children:

It was nearly time to do the sketchbook sharing. I just had 5 minutes to sketch some meercats, who were on display with various other small animals. They don't keep still either! 

We gathered at 4 o'clock for a well-earned coffee at a lovely art-cafe, where we passed all the books around the table. 

We started the day with 13 people, 4 of whom were new-comers, which was lovely. Some people had to leave us after the sharing, but more than half the group travelled back New Mills together, for one last, 15 minute sketch-opportunity, before heading home.

We had to sit in a patch of nettles for this view - dedication or what?! I sploshed about with some watercolours. There was only time to capture an impression, but that was probably a good thing:

Then it was time for the train back to Shefffield. I enjoyed the journey both ways too. It took 45 minutes, which gave us a chance for a good chat - generally we are too busy drawing to talk for long!

What a brilliant day. Thank goodness for sunshine. And thank you to Derbyshire members Lynne and Andrea for their help with the planning.

You can see more photos and other people's sketches here. Everyone is welcome to come along to our SketchCrawls any time they like. If you would like to join us, just drop me an email.

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Creating the Artwork for the Children's Mural

Last week I was finally able to begin the digital artwork for the library mural. It's a bit annoying though that my go-ahead coincided with the good weather starting, so I have spent these lovely sunny days mostly trapped inside, sitting at the computer!

It took a while to get my head round how best to do the artwork. I am creating it at quarter size and in 4 sections, but it is still at the limit of what the computer can cope with. I have been scanning in all the individual children's drawings, like this tiger, trying to match the size of each to the low-res design I created, then cutting each out in Photoshop.

I then position each in a new high res version of my background illustration of the library space. It is taking WAY more time than I thought (naturally) and making sure the 4 sections match up exactly, when I can't open them all at once, has been making my head explode. 

I sent the sample piece below through to the printer. This was the first section I finished and is the far left end of the design. The printer is going to do lots of test prints, trying out different kinds of papers, we will then paste the printed mural to the wall like wallpaper.

Speed Sketching

I  have really got into sketching out of the car window as we drive. Luckily for everyone, I am the passenger, not the driver! It's not disimilar to drawing from the train window, but of course you do have the additional luxury of the view forward, which makes things a little easier.

We travelled up to the north Lake District for the Ireby Music Festival last weekend and I sketched most of the way up and part of the way back. 

I enjoy the challenge of the crazy amount of time you have before everything has changed or passed by, although it does often make me grumpy too, as I have an extremely poor visual recall, so find I can't draw from memory at all.

I did lots of sketching at the festival too. I'll post some of those once I've had time to do the scanning in.

Swap! - a Close Shave!

Do you remember the text overlays I created for my Swap! illustrations a while ago? Well, I missed something: it was only when I was going over the final layouts that I noticed Sparky's medallion on the opening spread:

That was close! Luckily, it only took about half an hour on my computer to quickly create a little, pastel-style 'S' to shoot off to my designer, before the deadline: