Visiting York Minster with Prince Philip

As regular readers will know, my location-sketching group, SketchCrawl North, has visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park several times in the past couple of years. But my original contact there moved on some time ago and now organises arts and community projects at the Minster in York. Which made me think...

Well, it would be the perfect location for a SketchCrawl, wouldn't it? 

So, on Monday I took the train up to York to meet with her and put together a plan for a day of drawing, which will be part of The Big Draw, but also link in to a local festival, Illuminate York. We walked through the Minster, selecting good locations to focus on and working out timings for the day.

A surreal twist to the day came in the form of Prince Philip, who had decided to pop in that very morning. It was all very hush-hush, so there were no crowds, just a few photographers and people who worked in the Minster. At one point, he stopped to chat to someone and was standing just a few yards away, looking very smart in a rather sharp suit. If I'd had my pencil at the ready, I might have sketched him!

After my meeting, I decided to take advantage of my free access to the Minster, so sat and did a couple of sketches, practising one of the workshop techniques I learnt in Barcelona ('draw buildings as if they were monsters' - big thanks to Inma Serrano). I just dove in: no measuring, no guidelines, a totally feel-as-you-go type of thing. It's far more fun and makes complex architecture, like this vaulted ceiling, a lot less daunting.

The weather was brightening up by then, so I went and did some more sketches of the Minster from the outside. I was having a great time, sitting in the sunshine, drawing away, saying hello to occasional on-lookers. 

I knew John was out until late at home so, with no reason to get back, I carried on into the evening. These geese made me smile: they were grazing a patch of grass between the park and the main road but had also decimated the municipal flower bed:

This last sketch nearly caused me to miss my last train home. All through the afternoon, trains were at 35 and 45 minutes past the hour. I let myself miss the 8.45 so I could finish off, then went into a pub for a half of lager and a packet of crisps, to kill time until the 9.35. It was only when idly checking on my phone, that I realised the last train home was at 9.15! I had to down my lager and run: the cause of much embarrassing burping once I got on board. 

The York Minster SketchCrawl will be on Saturday October 26th and everyone is welcome. It's free and the Minster are even providing some art materials, so just grab a sketchbook and meet us there at 10am. You can check their website for more details nearer the time.