SketchCrawl Day at the Hepworth Gallery

Saturday was this month's SketchCrawl Day for Urban Sketchers Yorkshire. I decided to take the group to the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. I chose it partly because there is an exhibition on at the moment, which is related to urban sketching. The drawings and paintings were made at the time of WW2 by artists like Henry Moore, Edward Bawden and John Piper, documenting their  world at the time (it's on for months yet - I recommend a look if you can get there).

The main reason for sketching there though, was the fantastically huge windows, floor to ceiling, which give great views out over a river and weir, towards the town of Wakefield. Perfect for indoor sketching while the weather is so cold. The windows look small in my painting, but it's just a very big building:

As it happened though, we didn't need the windows: the weekend was weirdly hot for March. Most people stayed outside. While I was sitting beside the gallery painting the piece below, I actually felt too warm and had to take my cardigan off - whatever next?!

There is also another really interesting show on at the moment, called Disobedient Bodies, looking at fashion as sculpture (running until 18th June). There is one room which contains a hanging 'forest of jumpers': knitted in wild stripes of different colours and elongated from the ceiling to the floor. There are some very peculiar, distorted versions of the body too, which are then dressed in different ways. I was particularly drawn to this piece, in its yellow stockings:

Actually, this was a return visit to the gallery for us - we sketched there back in 2011, not long after it opened. It was interesting to look back at my work from then. It was before I had started to use watercolour. I didn't realise until just now, but I drew the very same sculpture on both occasions.

There was some fantastic work done on Saturday by other members of the group, which you can see on our Facebook page. We will go back and sketch there again and not leave it so long this time. I will certainly be going back to see the Howard Hodgkin in India exhibition, which opens on July 1st.