A Virtual-Tour of my New Studio & Exhibitiion

Before I left the studio on my first day in residence at Orchard Square, I took it little bit of film. It's just a quick walk-through of the space, but it gives a much clearer picture than photos can.

I love the two big squidgy armchairs which I inherited from a previous tenant. They make things feel much more cosy and give me somewhere to sit for a cuppa with visitors if I fancy a break.

My New 'Sketchbook Skool' Course!

Exciting news: I'm one of the instructors on a new online course. This is quite different to my Craftsy class, but hopefully just as much fun, maybe even more - with this class, you also get a tour of my studio and get to watch me create a painting on location:

Remember, back in September, when the Sketchbook Skool film crew spent the whole day with me at my home? They shot 27 films!! Well, I do like to talk about my work and got rather over-excited, showing them all the different things I do. They eventually edited the footage down to 14 films and that is my new sketching course.

It's not just me though. My week of films is part of a larger, 5 week course, called Exploring. There are 5 different instructors, each with a week of films, talking about drawing and painting from their perspective and sharing all their hot tips. They've got some great people, as you can see:

 

I think you'll like Sketchbook Skool, because their mission is “art for all”. Like me, they believe everyone is, and can be, creative. All people need are the right teachers to show them how much fun it can be to develop the creative habit, to get them started, exploring the possibilities. That’s where I come in.

The Exploring course will begin online on April 17 but you can sign up anytime from now on. For each of the five weeks of the course, you get a different teacher (including me - hurrah!), showing you different things to try and think about, to take your creativity to the next level. Signing up means you also get to join the Sketchbook Skool community of creative people just like you and me, to share your creations with like-minded people from all over the world.

Filming for Sketchbook Skool

Okay, I promised to tell you about the day of filming we did in the studio last week. Sketchbook Skool is online art classes, somewhat like Craftsy, but with a very different feel: more about inspiration and ideas than step-by-step teaching.

Koosje from Sketchbook Skool contacted me ages ago about the project, but I was in the middle of my crazy time, working on the residency and Class One Farmyard Fun, and so we had to put things on hold until now.

Koosje is lovely. She flew over from Amsterdam to direct the film, but she employed a film crew from Manchester to do the rest. Sam, Judith and Joe were brilliant to work with, so everything went really smoothly. It was incredibly hard work, but great fun. They all arrived at 8.30 in the morning and we didn't finish until 7pm. Just to prove it, this was our filming schedule:

Apart from a 45 minute lunch, we actually didn't take any other breaks all day, as we inevitable got behind schedule. One other thing which made it even more tiring, was that it was a really hot day, but we couldn't have any windows open, because of noise. What with the lights and all 5 of us in the room all the time, it got hotter and hotter. Every time we cut for a minute or two, I zapped a fan on, which was heavenly, but made the heat even worse afterwards!

My job was to deliver a series of talks on different aspects of my work. I did one all about confidence and creative anxieties, another about the various kinds of drawing, painting and illustration I do, I talked about using sketchbooks to record passing time, about people sketching, about the sketching materials I use... plus loads more. Now you can see why we needed all day! 

We did a 'sketchbook-tour': filming one of my sketchbooks, as I slowly turn the pages. We also did a tour of my studio. This inspired me to tidy up! And I don't just mean put a few things away and go round with a damp cloth. I went bonkers. I realised that I had so much stuff cluttering the room which was years and years old and just needed throwing out. I spent an entire day at it the week before they came and I felt amazing afterwards - so purged! It has made the studio a much more efficient space again, more like it was when we first set it up.

We finished the day with an on-location sketching demo. Because we were so lucky with the weather, it was still really warm for me to sit on the street, even at 6pm. I painted a pizza man who parks up every Wednesday outside my favourite café. I don't particularly enjoy being filmed why I work as it piles on the pressure, but it came out fairly ok. That's John watching me on the far left hand side by the way.

The edited films will be available sometime between December and Spring: Koosje is not sure yet, as I will be packaged together with other artists. I'll keep you posted.

Ooo look: Another Film!

I had a lovely surprise when I looked at my emails this morning. There was a link to a little film of me, posted yesterday, by Urban Sketchers. It was created at the Urban sketchers Symposium, in Manchester. I am talking about some of things which drive my sketching and the techniques I get most excited by.

They made short films of all the symposium instructors and I had completely forgotten about it, with everything else that's happening.

The really funny thing is, I had a film crew in the studio all day yesterday, but it was nothing at all to do with this film, just a peculiar coincidence.

I'll tell you all about that next time. In the meantime, hope you enjoy my little interview. If you want to find out how to make concertina sketchbooks like the one I demonstrate, there are step-by-step blog posts about it, along with other useful sketching tips, on the blog page of my new website.

Unfolding Stories, the Movie!

I am so pleased that Professor Sue Heath worked her magic and talked the university into funding a film of my artist-in-residence project. Even though the residency is now all finished (so sad...), it is lovely, and very useful, to have such an excellent record of what it was all about.

We commissioned an independent film maker called Howard Warmsley. It wasn't until he started talking to Sue and I about what we wanted from the film, that I realised how complicated a job we had given him.

There were so many threads to tie in. To start with, he had get across my perspective on the project: what I was trying to achieve with the concertina sketchbooks, what I learnt etc, plus showing me in action of course. Then there was the academic angle on the work, both during the project and looking to the future. We had to explain why Sue commissioned me in the first place and make sense of some of the sociological research projects I had shadowed. On its own, all that would still have been straight forward enough, but then Howard also had to include the fact that I was teaching the academics to draw, how that worked and what they got out of it, both on a personal and professional level.

As if that wasn't enough to worry about, poor Howard also had an additional challenge. Because it took a while to put together the bid for the money to pay for the film, and then a while longer to get it all rubber-stamped, by the time we were ready to begin, the students had almost all finished and most of the academics I'd been working with had disappeared! We had to shoot everything we needed really quickly before the place was entirely deserted and I was left with nothing to draw.

Howard hired an old warehouse for a day, to film the main interviews. The space was acting as an art gallery, so we had a white wall to tack up the sketchbooks and room to lay down a track, so Howard could pan smoothly across them. I did the sketch at the top while they were recording a section of Sue's interview. It started to rain so heavily at one point that we had to stop because the pounding of the water on the roof was so noisy!

One last-minute challenge for Howard was that Sophie Woodward, who I had worked with so closely on the Dormant Things project and who was heavily pregnant at this stage, didn't turn up at the warehouse. We got a text message from her partner: Sophie had been whisked into hospital and she'd had her baby! We decided that was a pretty good excuse and Sue did her best to cover for her.

We then had to wait for Howard to edit it all together - the trickiest bit, both for him and for me! Sue and I got to see a rough-cut a couple of weeks later, then another slightly less rough edit a couple of weeks after that. It was a race to get it done in time for the big end-of-project exhibition. We didn't see the final thing until the day we actually put the exhibition up. Howard arrived mid afternoon, with the magic on a DVD. I was so excited to see it, I was nearly bursting.

The version above is a slightly different edit of the film to the one which we played at the Unfolding Stories exhibition in July. Howard cut me a second version, specifically for my new website, with a very slightly stronger emphasis on my story and with more footage of me creating the actual paintings.

I think he did an absolutely brilliant job. All the strands weave together in a really clear way. Somehow he managed to distill hours of interview footage down to just 15 minutes, while still getting across all of the most important things that we said.

Anyway, take a look. I've already had some amazing feedback, which is fantastic. I'm so pleased it all comes across so well. Thank you Howard!

Advances - I am at 99%!

Since my Craftsy masterclass launched on Oct 19th, I have had an amazing 1161 people sign up! This is great news, not just because it is brilliant to know that it is obviously hitting the spot, but also because Craftsy classes are paid very much like picture books - you get an advance and then royalties. 

For those who don't know how an advance works, it is a payment to help cover the time the artist spends in development and production. It's better than a flat fee though, because it is an advance on royalties that the company expects you will be able to earn, which means that, if sales go really well and you earn more than the advance they've paid, you start to get more payments: your actual royalties.

I was paid half my advance when we finished filming in September last year and half when the class went live in October. The Craftsy website has a place with a little graph which tells me how much of my advance has been earned out. I've been taking a peak every few days and watching it creep up and, FANTASTIC news - this morning it looked like this. It was at 99%! 

I goes up slightly faster if people click through from my website or blog, so it's hard to work out exactly how many people that missing 1% represents, but I reckon I need about 12 more people to subscribe, for me hit the golden 100%.

The great thing about a Craftsy class is that it is not in 'real time'. You can sign up at any time and watch it at any time: it's there forever, for you to watch over and over if you like, so you can work through things as fast or as slowly as you wish. Plus, if you get busy and suddenly don't have time to get through all the 7 lessons, you can come back and carry on next year, if that fits better. You also get the chance to ask me questions and post your homework. If you've not seen it yet, this little trailer gives you a very clear idea of what you learn:

So, if you want to be able to draw characters with confidence - animals, people, whatever you fancy - and more importantly, learn how to make them feel real, by giving them individual personalities and emotional responses to their situations, have a go at the class and be one of my 12 people! 

It's currently on sale at £19.16 (or whatever the equivalent is in dollars, if you are over that side of the pond). I think for what you get, that it really good value. I've certainly had lots of lovely feedback. Hope you like it!

My Illustration Masterclass - Big Black Friday Sale!

Okay, much though I personally hate the whole Black Friday bonkers shopping thing, it turns out that there is an very definite up side... (pause for drumroll)... 

... because my Craftsy class is going to be offered at a special SALE PRICE for the whole weekend - just over £12 (think that's about $20) - hurrah!

So, if you haven't got around to signing up yet (shame on you :-D ) here is the SUPER-DUPER BLACK FRIDAY SALE link to my illustration masterclass, which will teach you how to draw the most expressive and funny picture book characters. I make it easy. Promise.  

Just think what an amazingly original Christmas present idea it would be for an arty friend. Or maybe just an early Christmas present for yourself (the best kind of present...). Go on, treat yourself...

Online Workshop: Drawing Picture Book Characters

My special half-price deal has ended, but fear not - you can still get my class at a permanent 20% discount if you click through from this blog and from my website.
If you haven't seen it already, this little trailer shows you the kind of thing I cover in the 7 lessons:

I am thrilled to bits with how it's recruiting and I already have three really lovely 5-star reviews on the class. Here are highlights from what my new students had to say:

"This is a terrific course. Lynne Chapman is an excellent teacher who knows how to make it seem easy and fun to draw. I am a retired illustrator, and I've been rather stuck in my ways of doing things but I have enjoyed learning Lynne's approach and it is giving me new inspiration. This is carefully planned and well presented. I recommend it. A five star course for artists young and old." 
" Lynne is so clear to listen to and really helpful. The homework seems really doable and the accumulated knowledge is applicable to all kinds of illustration regarding a younger audience" 
"This course is absolutely the best I've seen. I've watched it several times. Lynne is a great tutor. She immediately makes you feel at ease and, although she makes it look so very easy, she encourages everyone regardless of ability." 

Thank you guys for that smashing feedback. I'm so glad it the class is coming across so well!

So, click this link and you will get the class for 20% of the regular price. Have fun!!

Illustrating Picture Books: My Craftsy Class is Here!

Today is the day!! My Craftsy master-class, teaching you how to draw children's book characters, just went live, slightly ahead of schedule! You can get the class at a permanent discount of 20% off this blog post or direct from the link on my website. Yep - Craftsy allow me to discount the class if I want. 

Last week I got a sneak preview of how it looks and am absolutely delighted with the way it's turned out. The editing guys have done a smashing job, splicing all the material together. There's me talking (okay, nothing new there says John...), plus all the various drawing demos that we filmed, lots of illustrations from my books, as well as various extra drawing tips with bits and bobs of graphics. 

Plus, Craftsy's clever, techy guys have had to build the whole background platform, because the workshop is not just a series of films. Oh no...

After each lesson, I set my students a homework project to do. Then, when they're done, they can post their work onto a gallery, for me and the other students to see. Great eh? Plus students can even ask me questions, if there's anything they need more help with.

Huge CONGRATULATIONS to Tami T, who was the winner of my prize draw. Well done Tami! Have fun. I look forward to seeing your characters :-)

If you were unlucky, don't worry: all is not lost! Craftsy classes are very reasonably priced but if you are on a tight budget, get in quick while mine is super-duper-brilliant-value with my launch-week deal... 

50% off!!

The other brilliant thing about the workshop is that it does not have an expiry date. You can watch it as many times as you like, for as long as you want - once you sign up, everything is yours for good. And because you only need a pencil and paper, once you have signed up, it's not going to cost you anything extra at all.

I have tried really hard to pack all 7 of the lessons with tons of tips which should really help your character drawings, both of animals and people, but I've also done my best to make it a fun workshop to do. 

Please do let me know what you think. As this is my first venture of this kind, I'd really like to hear your feedback.

How to Illustrate Expressive Picture Book Characters!

The prize draw for my on-line illustration workshop, the one I filmed recently in Denver with Craftsy, is now over. Congratulations to Tami T who won a free subscription to my 7-lesson master-class on How to Illustrate Expressive Children's Book Characters.

The class launched on October 19th and I am very excited with how it all looks. Don't worry if you missed the draw though - I am still offering a special discounted rate for the class. Just click here.

The 7 lessons take you through everything I could think of that you need to know for creating believable human and animal characters for your illustrations: I crammed in everything I have learnt over the years for you.

We go through lots of tips to show you easy ways to sketch various basic characters as well as how to get across different ages, by playing around with various proportions:

I also demonstrate simple devises for creating different personalities, by varying the positions of facial features, in combination with different head shapes:

I show you how to make characters walk and run, and how to add different facial expressions to communicate more about what's happening:

In one lesson, we look at how you can use clothing and props to tell people more about what your characters are doing and who they are:

We had a lot of fun filming a lesson on how to communicate emotion. At home in my studio, I often act things out in a mirror, to work out the best body-language to use. Clif, my producer, thought it would be good to actually do this on set, so we stole the huge mirror from my dressing room and set it up on an easel in the studio:

I then had to do my acting out in front of the camera (!), playing at being angry, sad, scared etc. before transferring the positions to different character sketches. It took us ages to work out the best way to film it, so we wouldn't see the cameras in the mirror, not to mention the big battery pack I had tucked under my skirt (does my bum look big in this...).

So, this is actually me, being terrified:

At the end of each section, I give you homework tasks, to help you practice what we have been doing and you can then post your work for me to see. You can even ask questions. 

I had a lot of fun creating the class and I am hoping it will be a lot of fun to do. By the end, you should be able to create pretty much any character you fancy. But better than that: you will be able to make them feel 'real' (even if they are a crocodile in a dressing gown and slippers), because you will learn how to communicate what they are thinking and feeling too.

I really hope you enjoy the class - let me know what you think!

Filming My Craftsy Workshop in Denver

Well, goodness me - what a fun, whirlwind week I had in the US! I got back last Tuesday evening and have been catching my breath (and catching up on emails) ever since.

Where to begin? Well, the 3 days I spent at the studios were so interesting. Craftsy are a lovely company to work with and really looked after me, including a chauffeur to pick me up from the airport, which was an excellent start. 

I arrived on Monday night and I had Tuesday off, to get over the jet-lag and altitude, although actually neither gave me much trouble (I think my excitement over-ruled them), so I enjoyed wandering about, exploring Denver city-centre (above) and I had a lovely visit to the art museum, which was fabulous both inside and out:

They had an exhibition on 'flower painting through the ages' and, when I spotted a bunch of easels and piles of oil-pastels in their activities room, I couldn't resist sitting down for an hour and giving it a go:

On Wednesday morning I was picked up by the lovely (and very pregnant) Danica, my make-up artist, and driven to the Craftsy studio complex, where I had my very own dressing-room:

I took a change of clothes for half-way through each day of filming, so four outfits in all, to create visual variety on screen. We had fun trying to find ways to hide the mike under my cardigans and collars. People who were doing classes about dressmaking took about 10 outfits, so I got off very lightly. 

I liked the personalised star on my dressing-room door (nice touch):

That first day was a rehearsal day. We ran through a couple of lessons, to get me warmed up and used to working with the teleprompter, but it was mostly a technical rehearsal. We spent the day setting up the cameras and the clever, computerised stuff, talking through the best way to achieve things and familiarising me with the process.

We were a team of four and we all got on like a house on fire, right from the beginning. There was Clif my producer, who was as familiar with the material as me and who also acted as director and general 'person-with-an-overview'. This is Clif and pretty much the view I had while we were filming:

Then there was Tim, the man behind the sound recording and the various cameras. There were three rolling all the time I was delivering my lessons. Firstly, there was camera A which was looking straight at me, then camera B which always pointed directly down at the paper in front of me. Lastly, looking over my shoulder, was camera C. Here is Tim getting camera B into position on Wednesday morning:

Finally, there was Nick (who sadly, I forgot to get a photo of). He spent the whole time behind 3 computer screens at the back of the studio. His principle job was to create a rough-cut of the footage as we went along, editing together the output from the three cameras, on-the-hoof. 

On Thursday and Friday, I was picked up at 7.30am (!), made to look gorgeous by Danica, before starting filming at around 9.00. We had such a laugh. All my team were great - they were very easy-going and good fun to banter with, but at the same time clearly knew exactly what they were doing. The attention to detail was very impressive.

We worked until 6.30 most nights, with me sitting at the desk, either explaining various elements of a lesson to camera, or doing my demo drawings of the many different characters I'm teaching people to create. I had practised the material quite a few times, so mostly I didn't need to actually 'read' it off the auto-cue, just use it as a prompt to keep me on track, but we still had to do a fair bit of stopping and starting, where I fluffed words or forgot what was coming next, because I was looking down at the drawing I was doing and so not at the prompt. That's where having 3 camera angles is really useful: you can always find an easy place to cut in again.

There are now about 5 weeks left before the class will be ready. Nick's rough-edit needs to be fine-tuned, plus lots of images from my books need to be spliced in, where I use them to illustrate various teaching points as we go through the lessons. Like with Nana Croc for instance, when I am talking about ways to add humour when you are designing outfits for your animal characters: 

There are all sorts of additional graphics to add too, as well as setting up the interface for the students - one of the great things about Craftsy classes is that you can ask me questions and can show me your work. 

Just before the workshop goes live, I will be running a competition, to give away a free subscription to the class, so watch this space. I will also be giving out special launch-week discounts.

I can't wait to see what the technical guys do between now and then. SO exciting!

Packing for Denver: all Jolly Exciting!

Today is my day for getting everything together to take to Denver. I fly tomorrow!

I don't really enjoy packing at the best of times, but it's hard choosing clothes when you are working for a week and have to look good every day - no place for jeans and skanky T-shirts! 

Luckily, I haven't got to take any picture books or artwork, because I posted a package a couple of weeks ago with all that. It always makes me a bit nervous when I post actual artwork, but I crossed my fingers and sent a big piece from Bears on the Stairs: 

...along with various sheets of roughs and a load of my books.

I have been working really long days all this week, trying to get everything prepared, not just for the 3-day film shoot, but also for the 2-day, real-life, illustration workshop I am running for Denver University, straight after the Craftsy filming (I can't remember if I told you about that?). The university's weekend workshop has been rather tucked into the background of my head, with everything else that has been going on lately. Goodness me.

Anyway, I am as prepared as I am ever going to be - no more time to worry about it!

Wish me luck...

A Second Chance to Get it Right...

I've got another Skype rehearsal of my 'how to design picture book characters' workshop this afternoon. This time at least I have the chance to spend a bit of time going through it in advance, reading it aloud. It's amazing what a different that makes - lots of last minute jiggery-pokery is needed to make things flow naturally.

The Skype practices are a bit of a performance logistically. I have to use our laptop to deliver the face-to-face lesson, for my producer Clif, in Denver. I need prompt notes though, which will be on the main computer, by the side. So far so good, but I also regularly use examples of my finished illustrations (scans of which will ultimately be edited into the lessons, so the student will see them on screen). Trouble is, for me to see what I'm talking about during the rehearsal, each illustration needs to be brought up on the computer as I go along, squeezed in alongside the prompt notes. It doesn't make for easy, uninterrupted flow.

We haven't time to run though everything (7 lessons at 20-25 minutes each is a long time), so I will perform a single lesson, as a test, which will also give us an idea of how accurate my original timings were. I am either going to choose a lesson on facial expressions...

...or on creating movement, as those lessons refer less to my archive illustrations, which will definitely help. One other snag though, is that I will be drawing lots and lots of demonstration sketches (I also need to make room for paper, in front of 2 computers squeezed onto one desk), but Clif won't be able to see my sketching at all - just me talking away about what I am doing.

There's no way round that really, but Clif says he is mostly interested in the flow of me talking and the timing - he trusts that the drawing demo side will be fine. It's making the talking bit run quite naturally from one teaching point to another, as if I'm just chatting to a friend.  I've got to get good enough at it that I don't ramble, so we can see more clearly how long each lesson will take.

Better get back to it then!