Yorkshire Puddings and Big, Burlesque Char-Ladies in Rubber Gloves and Curlers!

Surreal as that combination may sound, it was what I was drawing on Tuesday night, during a hilarious evening at The Greystones pub in Sheffield. It could only be a Dr Sketchy night!

The Yorkshire Puddings are a group of ladies who are big and proud. I suspect they more usually perform in fishnets and feathers, but for our sketching evening they dressed up like something out of Andy Capp (okay, so who is old enough to remember that strip?). There were headscarves and slippers, feather dusters and overalls, with wonderfully broad bottoms and big bosoms beneath. 

But what made it so funny was that they didn't just dress up, they got totally into character. They grumbled and quipped their way through the proceedings, with heavy Yorkshire accents, shuffling their way up and down from the stage, round-shouldered, mops in tow. The whole thing was brilliant. 

Then half a dozen char-ladies did a dance routine, still in character, which gradually evolved into a striptease, revealing bumper brassieres trimmed with sequins or ostrich feathers, black basques and big, lacy bloomers!

At half time, to keep up with the theme, there was a game of bingo, incorporating some rather unexpected calling names, quite clearly being made up on the spot. The bingo was followed by a 5 minute pose where we were asked to draw only with our bingo-dibbers. Unfortunately, I had a lurid orange one:

At intervals, prizes were given for the best sketches (chosen by the models). I won for a round where one of the ladies posed up on the bar between the pumps:

They got all the prizewinners up on the stage at the end, for a group photo:

I really look forward to my Dr Sketchy evenings, because I love the crazy dressing up, but I also love drawing to music and, although it's pretty exhausting, I really like the relentlessness of the pace: five or ten minute poses, one after another. There was only one pose I think that was as long as twenty minutes and that was because we had about eight models up on stage! I only managed to tackle three:

If you live anywhere near Sheffield and like life-drawing, but fancy something a bit different, for goodness sake check out the Dr Sketchy events at The Greystones. They are every couple of months: the next one is on March 8th, 7.30 - 10pm.