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!