Being Sick and Sketching in the Park (Luckily, not Simultaneously)

So far this weekend, John and I have mostly been in bed. No, I know what you are thinking... nothing saucy (far from it). On Thursday night, during the private view of The Great Sheffield Art Show, I suddenly had to rush to the loo to be violently sick. Not, I hasten to add, an effect of the artwork, but of a very nasty tummy virus. I had my head in the loo once an hour, all night long. Lovely. John wasn't actually sick, but felt awful (at least that's what he said... or was he malingering?). Anyway, we both slept all of Friday and still felt decidedly delicate yesterday. 

Thank goodness it was this weekend though, and I was fit and well last weekend, as that was the weekend of my Broomhill Festival event. For the last three years, the festival have asked me to run a SketchCrawl in the Botanical Gardens. 

Often the people who come are less experienced sketchers than at the Urban Sketchers Yorkshire SketchCrawls I run each month and my role is more to offer help and inspiration than to actually sketch. In previous years, we have had a fairly modest turn-out though, so I have done quite a bit of drawing too. This year, we had a lovely big group, so I only grabbed 10 minutes at the end to do the quickie above.

It was glorious weather and a really lovely group of people, so we all had a good time. They worked really hard too and several of them have now signed up for my regular SketchCrawls, because they want to try it again - result!

SketchCrawl on July 19th - Mark Your Diary!

Urban Sketchers Yorkshire's day out in Buxton was great fun and so was the Broomhill Festival SketchCrawl last weekend in Sheffield's Botanical Gardens. Next time round we are going to spend the day in Manchester, so if you like sketching, do join us.

I am REALLY hoping for dry, warm weather (it is mid summer after all!) so we can draw outside, because we are visiting some beautiful buildings: Manchester's old Town Hall, the magnificent John Ryland's Library and then finishing the day with the gloriously unconventional Royal Exchange Theatre.

Anyway, the details are below if you would like to take part. Everyone is welcome, whether you are a beginner, a professional or anything in between. It is totally free. You can even bring your children, as long as they bring a sketchbook and draw alongside you.

1^st stop and meeting place: outside Manchester Town Hall, Albert Sq at 9.20am

(sketching for 1hr 40mins, until approx 11.00)

(indoor meeting alternative if it's wet: Central Library foyer – access via Peter St)

2^nd stop: John Rylands Library, Deansgate at 11.10am

(sketching for 2hrs until approx 1.15 – inside if wet)

1.15 - 2.00: lunch – both venues have a café, or bring a packed lunch if you want to picnic.

3^rd stop: the Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann’s Sq, at 2pm

(sketching for 2hrs until approx 4pm – inside if wet)

As usual, we will go somewhere nearby to share our work at the end of the day: either a cafe or a bar. We will be winding up about 4.45 I imagine. 

I will be catching the 8.04 train from Sheffield, if you want to join me, getting into Piccadilly just after 9am (it’s not the nearest station, but cheaper, as you can buy cheap singles). Meet me by 7.55 at Ritazza cafe on the station forecourt. If that’s too early, feel free to join us later.

If you can't make July 19th, but would like to hear about future SketchCrawls, just email me. 

Power to your pencil!

A Penguin in Acapulco

I'm been continuing work on my penguin artwork for Spider magazine. I didn't quite get it finished on the 2nd day, as I suspected. Not far off though. Mainly the butterfly and the palm leaves to do. This was how it was looking at the end of Day 2:

Unfortunately, once I had done the butterfly, I had to fix it. I couldn't draw the palm leaf fronds on top of the background without doing this, as the paper was too packed with pastel to take another layer.

As you know, I hate fixative because it messes things up: everything goes a bit dingy (and strangely, while everything else gets darker, the blacks go less dark). Once it was dry, I had to spend a while re-lightening certain areas, then adding back the darkest shadows on the penguin. At least fixing the base layer will make the artwork slightly less vulnerable.

I had to turn everything upside down to do the writing on the sun cream. REALLY fiddly. Hope it is legible, so people get the joke:

There's another wee visual joke on the sandcastles, which you might not have noticed: I have used the Antarctic flag, since that's where Mo has come from. 

The palm leaves were a bit I was not looking forward too, so I left them until last. I knew they would pull it all together, but also knew they could seriously muck things up if I wasn't very careful. This was how things looked at lunchtime on Day 3 - finished at last. 

The courier is coming to pick it up any time now, to wing it across the ocean to America. Let's hope they like it! The Penguin Who Didn't Like Snow is due for publication in the November/December edition of Spider magazine.

Manchester Library Meets Baby Goes Baaaaa!

I was in the newly re-opened (and gorgeous) Manchester Central Library recently, doing a storytelling event for local schools. I was too busy to look round properly, but what I saw was impressive. They have managed to pull off a modern, hi-tech look, without losing the warmth and friendliness that you need in order to want to curl up with a book. I liked the way the old and the new are dovetailed too. They are very fortunate to have some fabulous old bits to work with:

The performance space was really quiet and just roomy enough without being cavernous for little people. I had a lovely session with sixty 4 - 5 year olds, then ate a rather yummy lunch with the senior librarian in the library's gleamy new cafe. 

On the way out, I spotted this:

I had quite forgotten that Manchester were using some of my Baby Goes Baaaaa! illustrations for their publicity. This is a detail from the 'D' page of the book: Baby goes Da-da! - I think it works really well.

Starting My Pastel Artwork

The publisher of my new penguin project loved the rough I sent. No changes needed at all - hurrah! 

It took me most of the morning enlarging the line work and printing it out, cutting my Canson Teintes pastel paper to size and then tracing the image up on the light box. Then, finally, I was ready to go.

Here I am getting stuck into the artwork. I laid down the background first, as you do with pastels and am just beginning to pick out features:

It's been so warm lately and it gets really hot in the studio, being at the very top of the house, but it's been really nice to have the windows open. We have Veluxes on both sides of the roof, so you get a lovely through-breeze. It's almost like being outdoors, if you use your imagination, because we get birds sitting on the roof outside too. Sometimes I hear scrabbling scratching noises - the toenails of the fat pigeons slipping on the slates outside the window!

This is how things stood at the end of the day. Still at least another day of work to go I would say, but it's getting there: 

Masterclass in Lincoln

"Are you Lynne Chapman?" 

I was spied on the platform at Sheffield Station, sharpening my pencils as I waited for the train. I didn't know Beryl, but she recognised me, because she was on her way to my masterclass for SCBWI in Lincoln! Which was lovely: I didn't get to use my newly sharpened pencils, because we chatted all the way there.

I was met at the other end (thanks Alan) and Beryl and I were driven to The Museum of Lincolnshire Life, which looked really interesting. Unfortunately there was not a spare moment to look round, as I had a very full day.

I did a lecture first, about how I became an illustrator and the various other kinds of work I have done before picture books. Everyone laughed in the right places and asked lots of questions afterwards, so I think they enjoyed it.

The rest of the day was more informal. I had rooted out lots of roughs from Baby Can Bounce!, Bears on the Stairs and Swap!, including my very first sketch sheets, where I write my books in a kind of 'half words, half images' kind of way, trying to capture the ideas that pass through my head, before they escape. We laid these out on a big table and I talked people through them. 

I had even found my editor's feedback from Baby Can Bounce!, so we could look at my first roughs, the publisher's comments and my re-roughs together. I thought it was useful for showing the kind of feedback you get. I showed artwork too. Again, lots of discussion and good questions.

After lunch, I talked about my Urban Sketchers work. Again, we gathered around the big table and I took everyone through my sketching kit, demonstrating various tools for them. People were very interested in how I use the watercolour pencils and, as ever, people were fascinated by my Sailor pen.

I took a pile of sketchbooks too, and let people have a good old rummage.

I had a smashing day and met so many lovely people. It makes a real change to talk to grown-ups rather than children. Thanks so much to Addy Farmer at SCBWI for inviting me and to everyone who came, for making it such fun.

Broomhill Festival SketchCrawl

Every year I do a drawing event in Sheffield's Botanical Gardens for The Broomhill Festival. Time has flown, as it always seems to, and the festival has come around again. I suddenly realised - my SketchCrawl event is this Sunday afternoon, June 22nd! 

So, if you fancy having a look at some of my sketchbooks and then spending the afternoon sketching with me, come along with a sketchbook at 2pm:

Crossing fingers for sunshine. See you there!

The Penguin Who Didn't Like Snow

Well, I have finished the synopsis of my new Urban Sketching book and it has gone off to the publisher. I have organised my ideas into 15 chapters and, though I say so myself, it feels pretty thorough, but we'll see what my editor thinks. I'm really looking forward to getting down to it (though not looking forward to trawling through dozens of sketchbooks, trying to find the right images to illustrate it...).

In the meantime, I needed to crack on with my latest illustration project. It's called The Penguin Who Didn't Like Snow by Julie Anna Douglas. Poor little Mo the penguin - he feels the cold and ends up running off to Acapulco. You can see above that I spent some time working things out in my sketchbook and then drawing ideas up on layout paper. 

I wanted to illustrate Mo lazing on the exotic, Acapulco beach. I suddenly remembered a sketch I did when we were on holiday a few years back, in Costa Rica: palm trees, rain forest down to the sand...

The sketch was just the ticket as reference for the background, as you can see below, in the rough which I sent to the publisher: 

The text is a poem and it's an editorial job this time, rather than a picture book, so just the one spread to do. It's being published in the Nov/Dec edition of Spider, a children's magazine aimed at the American market. Let's hope the Art Director likes my idea. Keep you posted!

USk Yorkshire Go SketchCrawling in Buxton

The forecast for Saturday was appalling: heavy rain from early morning through until the end of the day, with thunder and lightning a possibility. Perfect SketchCrawling weather, so I didn't really expect many people to turn out. Saturday was intended as a day of drawing outdoors too, capturing some of the beautiful architecture, but that was clearly not going to happen. 

There was already a small group huddled outside the Opera House when I arrived and, over the next 10 minutes, they kept coming until I counted 23. It was starting to spit already, so we went inside to our first 'Plan B' venue: the Pavilion Arts Cafe. 

From the upstairs, which we had all to ourselves, there were great views out over the Pavilion Gardens, but I was most tempted by the way you could peer down over a balcony in the centre and spy on people sipping tea on the ground floor. 

I stood up, leaning over the railing for my first sketch above, but kept worrying that I would lose the grip on my sketchbook and it would go flying down and hit somebody on the head, so I sat down for sketch two, which is probably why it is more controlled (and arguably less exciting). I was snapped half way through - don't you just love the sketcher's double-chin? So flattering. 

We stayed there until midday, when we got our brollies out and headed across town for lunch. By this time, a few more people had joined us. We were such a big group that I had to book out half The Cheshire Cheese pub. Thank goodness they could fit us in at short notice.

It took a while for them to serve us all though, so I did this sketch: 

I was so intent on what I was doing, I didn't even noticed my sneeky neighbour snapping me in action once again:

It was nice to have a long, lazy lunch actually - it gave us lots of extra time to chat, especially good for the new faces. We had quite a few first-timers. Ours is a very sociable group. I think it's a really important part of the day.

Once we were all fed and watered, we headed to the Cavendish Arcade: a lovely, tiled arcade, with a beautiful glass ceiling. I don't feel I did it any justice:

The last sketch-stop was The Dome - part of the University of Derby. It had actually stopped raining, so I spent my final 45 minutes in the car park outside, crammed into a corner against a grit-bin, where I was able to get this view:

We had booked the upstairs room of The Old Clubhouse pub for our sharing session. We pushed loads of table's together, but still struggled to get everyone round. 

As usual it was lovely looking through all the books. It was especially interesting because of all the fresh faces. Lots of holding up of sketches, and: 'Wow - who did this!' kind of thing.

After about an hour, everyone went their separate ways, but I had to hang around, as John was coming to pick me up. Because the day was over, the sun was now out and it was really warm. I sat on the wall outside the pub and managed this sketch before he arrived:

Thanks to everyone who took part on Saturday, especially for turning out (and sticking with it) on such a miserable day. Next month we are thinking of visiting Manchester again, this time for the John Rylands Library and the Royal Exchange. They are both beautiful outside as well as in, so I'm crossing fingers that we might actually get a proper summer's day, no umbrellas needed!

I'm Writing a Book on Sketching People!

It's an idea that's been rolling around in my head, which I have been thinking of pitching to a publisher for a while. I never seem to get around to getting on with the groundwork though, as there is always so much else on (you know how it is). 

So, imagine my delight when Quarto Books emailed me out of the blue, asking if I would like to write one for them! It's going to be 128 pages, in the same series as Thor's book, which is a more general guide to Urban Sketching.

I have to write 25,000 words and there will be around 400 illustrations. The scanning in alone is going to be quite a task! The first stage is putting together a detailed synopsis, planning out the content chapter by chapter. So, last Friday, when it was uncharacteristically hot and sunny, I was able to sit out in the garden to work, rather than being cooped up in the studio. Lovely!

'Picture This!': Meet Me for a Day of Talks in Lincoln...

I am doing a rare event for adults on Saturday June 14th. If you are free and want to find out more about any aspect of my work, there are still places available.

My talks for adults are thin and far between, and then generally one-off lectures as part of literary festivals, but Picture This! is a very unusual opportunity to hear me talk for much longer and in a broader way, about both my sketching work and my book illustration. 

The event has been set up by the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, but is open to everyone. 

The plan is to begin by talking through how I got to where I am now, the different kinds of illustration I tried before I found children’s books, as well as how I got my foot in the door with children's publishing. 

I will then be going through the processes involved in creating my picture books, both from the point of view of an author and an illustrator. I will bring plenty of real-life examples of books-in-progress for you to look at, as well as at least a couple of pieces of my pastel artwork. It's so different to see things 'in the flesh'.

After lunch, I'll be sharing my sketchbooks and discussing my work as an Urban Sketchers correspondent.

I'll be talking a little about my educational work with children too and giving advice and practical ideas for any illustrators or authors who want to try doing school visits.

There will be a Q&A after each section, with plenty of opportunities to chat, as the set-up will be intimate and informal, rather than my usual lecture-theatre type of talk.

It is all happening in the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, from 11am - 2.45pm. It costs just £15 (£12 if you are a SCBWI or SoA member). So, given that numbers are limited, you need to get your skates on and get yourself booked in. Email Addy Farmer now, to reserve a place.