Thursday 22 October 2015

Sketcher-in-Residence: I Have Finished Book no.1!


I have done another couple of days of my residency, sketching life at the Morgan Centre and Manchester University. I thought you might like to see what I have done, especially as I have now filled the first of my 2m long concertina books: 


You saw the first section at the beginning of the month, but I have managed to add quite a lot since then. It's still been okay weather, so I spent some more time drawing outdoors to make the most of it, hanging around where the students chill out, ear-wigging their conversations... 


The snatches I grabbed really help to paint a picture of what it's like to arrive at a big uni at the beginning of term and sometimes be a long way from home.


When it got a bit chilly, I went into the canteen area, to capture the flavour of that. I got into several lovely conversations with students, because of course, I couldn't help attracting a certain amount of attention. 


On my most recent day, I attending a lecture. It was not the easiest thing to sketch, I must say:


This was the last section of the concertina, but the lecture hadn't ended, so I started on a new sketchbook and did the sketch below, of one of the students sitting near me. I showed her and her friends as the lecture wound up. 

Immediately afterwards, I attending a Morgan Centre team meeting. I just did this quicky sketch, as I was gearing up to do a little presentation to the team as part of the meeting, talking about the residency and my sketchbooks so far:


That afternoon, I ran a 3 hour workshop for around a dozen members of the Morgan Centre team, most of whom had never done any sketching at all. I was a little nervous, as the team including not only the director of the centre, but also David Morgan himself - the man the whole place was named after! 

The idea was to empower them to feel comfortable about a challenge they had signed up for - each had agreed to keep a personal sketchbook during the course of my residency. Perhaps even more scary for them, they are going to take part in a chain-sketchbook project, as well as go on a sketchcrawl.

I tried to make it fun and to show them different ways of tackling drawing and painting, to free them up from the idea that the main benchmark of success is visual realism. Everyone seemed to have a good time and be genuinely pleased with their efforts. Result.

6 comments:

Alison O said...

Lynn, These look fantastic, a real insight into daily life on campus. Your multicoloured pencil makes the most delightful lines doesn't it! I am sure you and the Morgan Centre are going to be thrilled with the outcome of this residency. If this is what your first book looks like, i can't wait to see what happens by the time you have finished the last one. Dream job.

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thanks so much Alison. Yes, the multi-coloured Koh-i-Noor pencil was a real find. It is indeed a dream job :-D

Anonymous said...

Love your sketches they are always so interesting. I'm looking forward to your book coming out I was hoping it will help me with my sketching. Have you ever thought of doing a workshop up here in Scotland preferably Dundee or even Edinburgh? I would so like to attend one. Keep up the good work. Marion Bolton.

lewerentz said...

It's very nice, well done ! I like your idea to paint/draw on long paper (that's what you call "concertina", isn't it ?).

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thanks!
Yes, it's called concertina, because it is folded up concertina-fashion into a book to work on and carry around and is only flat at the end, when it's finished and pulled out.

ANNE E said...

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