24 Hour Urban Sketching to SaveTrees

On 11th November, Armistice Day, I took part in a unique event, bringing together lots of different things I am involved with. We even made it onto BBC telly - who spotted Andy Kershaw above?

Street Tree Art Sheffield (STARTS) have been organising flash-mob style sketching events for a few months now, to raise awareness locally about the thousands of trees being chopped down in the streets of my home city. I have been along a few times and created the paintings you see above and below.

But the trees on Western Road are extra special. They are a living memorial. The avenue of 53, hundred-year-old trees were planted for the WW1 dead of the local school. Incredibly, almost half of these trees are under imminent threat. So, to try and shame the local council and to get media coverage, STARTS arranged a memorial event followed by an all-day, mass sketch-in under the trees.

This is artist Dan Llywelyn Hall (he's painted the Queen!), who also helped to set the event up and who created this massive painting of Western Rd:

It was a fabulous day and a huge success. Even the littlest people were able to get involved:

I've been told that near to 200 people registering to sketch, including local artists, people who just love trees and lots of children. Some people dressed up:

I got involved because I love trees too, but also because of an interesting coincidence. This year is the 10th anniversary of Urban Sketchers and they have been arranging different events to celebrate. The latest, the 24 hour Global Sketchwalk was scheduled for November 11th. See where I'm going with this..?

Luckily, their idea didn't involve anyone sketching for 24 hours - phew! The plan was to set up sketchcrawls around the globe so that, at any one time over the 24 hours, there would be people out sketching somewhere in the world. There was a live Instagram feed, where all the photos and sketches appeared, as the event swept around the globe. Amazing idea. It inspired so many regional Urban Sketchers groups that each was featured on the live feed for just 15 minutes!

Anyway, I decided to combine the two events and invited Urban Sketchers Yorkshire to take part in the mass sketch-in. Here we are at 10.30, getting ready to get stuck in:

STARTS allocated a specific tree to everyone who took part, so we would spread out down the long street and all the trees would be immortalised, just in case the council get their way and bring in the chainsaws. Mine was tree no 48. I wrote onto it the names of the men it was in memory of:

The local pub, the Cobden View was brilliant. They supplied tea and coffee on tap all day, to help us warm up, with a bounty of biscuits. Yum. They also provided the welcome reward of hot samosas and spring rolls at the end of the day.

Many of those hardened sketchers who braved the cold and stayed all day painted bonus trees too. This is my second tree: no 49. I worked a bit bigger than usual, because I knew that the artwork was going to be put into an exhibition...

... an exhibition which is opening on Friday!

It's going to be fantastic - there was so much fabulous work created. STARTS collected it up at the end of the event. The exhibition is called Fallen Boys Standing Trees, and is at Yellow Arch Studios. There is a celebratory gala day at the show on Sunday November 26th. Come along, see the wonderful tree pictures everyone created, have a glass of wine and listen to some live music.

York Minster - Sunny SketchCrawl

It's five years since Urban Sketchers Yorkshire last visited York Minster. I can't quite believe that: it feels like two or three.

We chose an absolutely perfect day for it this time, purely by chance. I expected to be sketching inside the Minster, but the weather was so glorious on Saturday, I spent my day slowly working my way around the outside of the building, drawing it from different perspectives and recording bits of the life around it. This was my first painting of the day, looking at the side entrance:

I used my usual technique of laying in roughly placed watercolour first, looking at the main shapes and the principle darks, before going in with a green Koh-i-Noor pencil to capture the essence of the twiddly detail.  When I got home, I discovered that this is a view I have painted before, on my earliest sketch-visit:

I used watercolour and a Koh-i-Noor pencil on this one too as it happens, but the effect is quite different.

For my 2nd painting, I walked round to the back of the building. The Minster is so huge, you have to find a way to get back from it. Luckily, a road provided a vantage point, giving me the distance I needed. I experimented by painting the sky first, looking at it as a negative space, then the building's shadows, then the line in my Inktense pencils. The paper texture creates a perfect impression of the window leading, though that was a lucky chance. The tiny railings were very helpful for adding scale:

We got together on the grass outside the Minster for a picnic at lunchtime and looked at the work so far. Unfortunately, by the time we asked a passer-by to take this photo, quite a few people had wandered off to buy coffee - there were about 30 of us altogether. We had quite a few first timers too, which is always good:

There is a spot, just off to the side of the main entrance, where busking is allowed. When we first arrived, a man was singing, really belting it out. By lunchtime, he had been replaced by a singer/songwriter with a guitar. As you know, I love sketching musicians, so I planted my little stool on the pavement in front of her and started to paint. This was watercolour first, then Inktense pencils:

She was really good and it was a treat to have live music while I worked. I showed her when I was done and she was thrilled to bits and took my photo with the sketch. I didn't know at the time, but one of our group spotted me in action and also took this photo. I had a nice chat with the man to my right, who watched me from beginning to end. He was covered in tattoos and so looked a little intimidating, but was actually really gentle-mannered:

York is very busy and, by mid afternoon, there were people everywhere, but I discovered a wonderful haven right alongside the Minster, which I'd never come across previously. The Treasurer's House has a walled garden, with a croquet lawn, a little fountain and a few statues. I was struck by this statue's profile, with the Minster's windows looming behind. Because it was a fairly complex view, I drew the line-work first, using a blue and a red Koh-i-Noor pencil, then painted the colour on top:

By the time I was done, I had an odd 20 minutes left, before it was time to re-meet up with everyone at the pub. The sun was still shining and I wanted to make use of every minute of it, so I quickly returned to the park where we had picnicked and did my best to capture this lovely tree against the ruins:

The upstairs room of The Eagle and Child was already full when I got there. People were sitting around 3 big tables, passing round the various sketchbooks. I threw mine into the mix and got stuck in, looking at all the work. The standard was really high and, as always, it was inspiring to see how other people had tackled things. You can look at other people's work from the day here.

A huge thank you to Joe and Michael for helping out by organising of the day (and booking the sunshine). A great success.

Salt's Mill in Saltaire: SketchCrawl Day

This time last week, I organised another SketchCrawl day out for Urban Sketchers Yorkshire. It's always really tricky at this time of year, as we need to be somewhere that allows us to be inside, out of the cold. You can imagine that over the years, we have been to most of the large museums and indoor venues for many miles around, often several times. But we missed one...

For some reason, I have never before organised a trip to Salt's Mill. For those who have never been, it's a gorgeous old mill building on 3 floors, beautiful restored and turned into a museum / art gallery / café / bookshop / high-end shopping venue. The gallery mostly features the work of my all-time favourite artist, David Hockney. At the moment, as well as plenty of other examples of his work through the years, they have devoted the main gallery space to his 2011 iPad landscape painting series, created in North Yorkshire. They work so well blown up huge. I remember being amazed at that when I first saw them at the Royal Academy show.

Because there was so much to see at Salt's Mill, I didn't sketch as much as usual. I spent the morning painting this view from the stairwell window. It gave a fabulous, elevated vantage-point, but I got absolutely frozen, as the stairwell was unheated. Worth it though.

There was an extraordinary turn-out for the event: the best ever. The biggest previous group was the 40 people we had for the day in York Minster, but on Saturday, we had 45 - 50 people! It was hard to tell precisely, as not everyone was there at the start, and a few left early. It made lunch quite interesting to organise. I booked several tables in the mill's Diner.

It was a really sociable lunch and the staff coped surprisingly well. While I was waiting for my soup, I did a quickie contour sketch across the table.

After lunch I decided to sit in comfort. The ground floor was a delight. Not only was it toasty warm, and crammed with interesting things including more Hockney work, making it a feast for the eyes, but vases of fresh lilies meant that it smelled lovely. And on top of all that, they played beautiful classical music the whole time. I settled on sketching this wonderful old stopcock / valve thingy.

At the end of the afternoon, as usual, we all got together to share what we had been up to. There were so many of us, we took over the café. Again, staff were brilliant, really accommodating, pushing lots of tables together and patiently serving teas while we oooed and aaahhed about the work.

Because we were so many, it took ages for the books to go all the way round the table and I very nearly missed my train home. Luckily, one of my travelling companions was more on the ball than me!

Another thoroughly enjoyable day out. And so good to see, once again, lots of newcomers taking part alongside us old hands.  

Leeds Royal Armouries Sketchcrawl

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you are all having a lovely holiday. I'm afraid that I haven't sketched or illustrated anything remotely Christmassy this year, so I thought I would share some entirely non-seasonal bits and bobs instead, work I created this time last week.

That was when Urban Sketchers Yorkshire had another of our grand days out. I got up early and took the train to Leeds, where I met up with about 25 other sketchers at the Royal Armouries.

We have been before to sketch there, but there's so much to go at, you could draw in there for a year without repeating yourself. And it's all free. Fantastic. It was really quiet too, so Sunday was obviously a good choice.

Before I got a chance to get into the exhibits, I was drawn to the interesting setting. Because there is so much glass in the building, you can see out in various directions. I spent quite a while on this first sketch, which is what you see from one of the huge 4th floor windows, looking over the canal basin. When we shared our work at the end, we found that quite a few people had sketched the same thing over the day.

This enormous, armoured elephant was another favourite with everyone. I discovered that you could get up above him on a mezzanine, so I got an interesting viewpoint. It made him trickier to draw though, and his legs have turned out a bit stunted, poor thing. I used my tinted sketchbook, a Strathmore, so I could pick out the highlights on his armoured coat in chalk.

Don't tell anyone but, as with the sketch above, I sneaked a little watercolour underpainting, which is not strictly speaking allowed, but with a waterbrush, at least there is no actual water to spill. Then I worked into it with my Inktense pencils.

Here's the drawing I did of the same elephant, on the previous occasion, in 2013. Rather more stately:

I finished my day by drawing this tableau in the 'hunting' section. I hate the whole idea of hunting anything, but the way the animals were posed provided such beautiful shapes and was so interestingly lit, I decided to sketch it anyway. I sat myself on the floor, which was very hard and quite dusty. It was only as I finished that I noticed the nice comfy stool hanging on the wall beside me. Typical.

Over lunch, I did some quickie drawings of some of our team, testing out different drawing materials. This first one, of Lawrence eating his sandwich (with an uncharacteristically refined outstretched little finger) is done with a Graphik Line Painter. I've never used one before, but it was beautifully smooth to draw with: it really glided over the paper. My lovely friends at Derwent sent me a set of 5 colours as a Christmas present. How lovely is that?

Lawrence then said I should try the Zig brush-pens which he likes to use, so I drew Micheal, who I could tell was  trying hard to look natural, pretending not to be being drawn! The brush-pens were very different, but also really nice to use: you could get a beautifully fine line with the sharp tip, as well as a gorgeous chunky one.

I need to play with my new Graphik Line painters. You can apparently get lots of effects with them.

I do like the simple idea of using a coloured line with watercolour work though, and they are waterproof once dry, so would be easy to paint over. We'll see...

In the meantime, if you want to see some of the other really lovely sketches created last Sunday, go to the Urban Sketchers Yorkshire Facebook page. Plus, if you are reasonably local and fancy a day of sketching with us, join up! It's all free and we are a friendly bunch. You don't even have to know what you're doing: beginners are very welcome indeed, just bring enthusiasm and a sketchbook, and enjoy yourself.

Knickers and Cakes

Last Saturday was SketchCrawl Day and we went on a day-trip to Huddersfield: yeh! Only problem: I don't know Huddersfield, so Sam, one of the other members of Urban Sketchers Yorkshire, scouted out some venues and organised the day for me. Even better!

We started of in St Peter's Church, where they were having a Christmas fayre. This was perfect: lots of stalls and colourful goings on to sketch. There were 27 of us, so we might have been in the way, except the vicar let us up into the gallery, which gave brilliant views down over everything. It was a tad daunting though, because it was extremely visually busy. I started with the cake stall. The smells wafting from it as we entered the church were GORGEOUS, but I was very good and resisted. Trouble was, lots of punters didn't resist, so the cakes were disappearing as fast as I could paint them!

My concertina was great, as I could just follow things along. I was very keen to get the TOMBOLA sign. It was a really cold day, so everyone coming in was bundled up in big coats and warm hats. Despite this, while I was in the warm drawing this soft-toy stall, one or two brave members stayed outside, to paint the church's exterior. Brrrrrrrr....

Sam booked us an area in a local café / bar for lunch, which was lovely, as everyone got to know each other, showing their sketchbooks to their neighbour. Then we were off again, this time to the covered market. It was not an attractive building, so I concentrated on stallholders. I was first drawn to this stall of big, sensible knickers:

Opposite was a kiosk where a woman was doing alterations to clothes. I loved the sewing machines, with the big cotton reels and there was a handy counter to rest on. I asked if she minded me painting her while she sewed. We had a lovely chat, working away together. It turned out she had an Art & Design background and she was really interested in joining our group.

There was a little girl hanging around: the daughter of the woman who ran the nearby nail bar and I got chatting to her too. She was 8 years old and her face was just level with my sketchbook. She watched eagerly as the painting progressed. She was asking lots of questions about my art materials, so I demonstrated how the Inktense pencils worked, explained my waterbrush and travel paintbrush, then gave her a Magic Pencil to experiment with on the back of my spare sketchbook. She was so good, I let her colour in with my Inktense. It was another of those really lovely moments, both of us drawing away side by side, chatting with Megan the seamstress.

At 3.30, all the group returned to the café for our sharing session and a cuppa. We pushed lots of tables together, as there were so many of us. There was some really fantastic work. A couple of the new members were exceptional too. Really inspiring! Unfortunately, by the time we remembered to take this photo, half the group had left. Still a good pic though:

Then it was time for me to dash off for my train home at 5.00. It's a very, very slow train to Sheffield from Huddersfield: as noisy as a cattle truck and it stops everywhere. We didn't mind though - the small group of us going back together chatted away all the way home.

What a lovely day out.

Drawing Dead Stuff - Manchester Museum

It was Urban Sketchers Yorkshire's sketchcrawl day on Sunday. We went across the hills to Manchester, to join up with some of their local group and visit the natural history museum on Oxford Road which, by coincidence, is next door to the building where I am based for my residency.

I probably wasn't really well enough to go, as I am still not well now after my Book Week experience. My head was still full of gunk on Sunday and I still very little voice, but I thought I would risk it, as so many people were due to turn up for it, some of whom I'd not seen for ages. I figured that, at least I would be indoors and sitting down, so how much harm could I come to?

The museum has got quite a varied collection, but is not so massive that you can't get a handle on it, so perfect for drawing purposes. As you can see, I concentrated mainly on the animals and skeletons, though there was a lot of anthropological stuff too, as well as rooms of rocks and crystals. 

I had a lovely time and was very pleased I went, although it was a mistake on the voice front, because of course everyone was chatting away to me and I ended up unable to keep quiet for very long at a time (never one of my strong points at the best of times, ask John). Which means that, though I was getting better, I am back to where I was again now. No voice at all. Duh.

After our sandwich break, I went up to the top of the building and did a sketch of the view from one of the windows, out over the old university buildings, just for a change. By now it was getting quite busy in the museum and kids were everywhere. I thought it would be peaceful up there, but somewhere an overexcited screamer was bouncing off the walls and making my ears ring... Then the sun decided to come out and was directly shining in my eyes, so I gave it up and found a dark corner with some cute penguin skeletons:

As usual, there was some amazing work done by everyone and the sharing session at the end was fascinating. By the time we took this photo, we were down to about half the original group, so you can see that the turn-out was great too. Once again, we had at least two complete newcomers, which was lovely:

On the train home, I did a quick drawing of the woman opposite. She woke up half way through and luckily, was really pleased to be drawn. She took my photo, holding up the sketch. A nice encounter.

Sorry for the slightly less crisp and zingy pics this time round - I've no time to scan anything properly at the moment, as I have to crack on with Class One Farmyard Fun, so these are just phone snaps.

Right, back to work!

SketchCrawl Day: Coffee and Egyptians

This time last week I was out again with Urban Sketchers Yorkshire. We were in Broomhill, in Sheffield, this month: only a 15 minute drive from where I live, so nice and easy. We started off at this great coffee shop I know - the coffee is pretty standard stuff and the ambiance is nothing special, but the views are BRILLIANT if you are a sketcher. It's on a corner and the upstairs has big windows running round both sides, looking down over the high street. 

We met at 10am. As 'normal people vacated tables, we spread and spread until we were taking up half the upstairs and most of the window seats. It was lovely to have such a brilliant turn-out again. I spent about 2 hours doing the watercolour above in a slightly smaller version of the concertina books I use for my residency. I was really pleased with it. 

Some people might recognise the corner on the left as the subject of a drawing demo I filmed a couple of years ago, showing you how to use the Inktense watercolour pencils. 

We spent the afternoon at the local Weston Park Museum - a short walk down the hill. It was a really COLD walk, with an icy wind, but one or two brave souls actually sketched outside the museum. Not me! I started with another cuppa and my sandwiches and did this 5 minute quickie while we were chatting:

Then it was down to work. There was a visiting exhibition on ancient Egypt, with some very beautiful bits and bobs. I decided to paint these rather than the mummy (slightly unravelling, so you could clearly see his toenails...). 

I finished off in the section with various stuffed animals. The goldfinch above caught my eye. While I was painting him, various families and kids came up to look and chat. It meant I got less done, but I don't mind; I really enjoy engaging people in conversation and showing them my little art-kit tricks. 

We started our sharing session back in the museum cafe, but they threw us out at 5pm, so we popped to yet another coffee shop across the road for another half an hour before they too shut up shop. A very successful day: very sociable, good fun and some lovely work as usual by everyone - really varies and interesting.