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Afterwards, I got a tour of their new exhibition spaces. They have David Attenborough no less, coming to open the museum area, with its collection of weird and wonderful stuffed animals (including an actual crocodile imprisoned under the glass floor!).
It was quite a busy week, as the Wednesday was Bag-a-Book Day. I spent a totally crazy day with poet Paul Cookson, entertaining looked-after-children. It was even more bonkers than last year. I got the children creating funky, animal collages out of fake fur and Paul helped them make up funny poems. Then we cross-fertilised: I illustrated the poems on the flipchart, and Paul wrote poems about my drawings. Every now and then we would break into song. All good fun (though I was totally shattered at home time!).
This week, I did another of my 'creating stories through illustration' workshops in Nottingham. I've got nine more days to come, repeating the same event in different schools. There's a 2 week break first, although not really, since between now and then I am visiting a couple of primary schools in Leeds, then travelling up to the North East for 3 days at the Northern Children's Book Festival, including a joint Gala Day event with my friend and picture book collaborator, Julia Jarman.
Phew! Where on earth will I find the energy for Christmas?
Having seen my Inktense sketches on this blog, my Mum said she fancied having a play with watercolour pencils. But she needed advice on where to start, so I wrote her some tips and ideas about how to get the feel for them. Having done it, I realised that some of you guys might also be interested.
A general bit of advice when trying out a new medium, is to allow yourself some time to 'play' before you try a finished piece of work. You need to build confidence and learn what will happen when you do certain things: with watercolour pencils, that might be establishing how hard to press, how much water you need, what colours look good together, what kind of marks work best etc.
So, here are some specific ideas to help you play effectively, some general pointers and some things to think about when you're doing your first drawings:
1 - It's best to use the pencils dry first, then brush on water near the end (you'll find the pencil marks are very different when used on damp paper).
2 - Draw quite boldly with the pencils, rather then 'tickling' the paper, so you get enough colour down: you don't want things to be too wishy-washy, however it's also important to leave some areas of clean white paper here and there, to give contrast.
3 - Experiment with different kinds of line work, like 'hatching' or 'scribbling': shading doesn't always have to be invisibly blended and linear marks can be exciting.
4 - Try using 2, or even 3 quite different colours together, so you get interesting effects when the water is added. Try laying the different coloured marks side by side, rather than shading them together. The water can be used to blend them, but your eye will help blend them too.
5 - Experiment with a limited palette (I often use only 3 or 4 colours in one sketch). It's usually more important to describe areas of shade and highlight, rather than worry about faithful colour.
6 - Avoid too much 'outlining' or, where you do need to outline, experiment with using different coloured outlines for different parts of the same object.
7 - Put water on in simple strokes with a brush that's not too fine. Don't scrub or keep going back over the same place, or your colours will get muddy and your 'paint' marks fussy.
8 - When sketching, try drawing instinctively rather than accurately, then using the water to paint up to where the outline should be: this can be a more subtle way of showing the edges of things too.
9 - Try keeping your brush marks visible, so they are not always blended away to nothing: they too can be visually interesting.
10 - Experiment with brushing on water so it overlaps and compliments the drawing marks, rather than just using water to 'fill in'.
Hopes that helps. I've found my Inktense watercolour pencils a really fun medium and perfect for drawing out and about, when I want bold colour but don't want to carry lots of painting gear. By the way, a waterbrush is another very handy piece of kit, as you really can paint anywhere with no water to carry (about £5):
You can see more examples of my Inktense sketches here (scroll down).
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 9/24/2012
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I try not to work weekends. Self employment is inclined to gobble up your private life if you're not careful. But things are really full-on at the moment. My latest deadline in Thursday first thing, so my Sunday had to be sacrificed to Swap!. At least I got Saturday. It was a gloriously sunny day again and, since each one could be our last, we drove out to Chatsworth, to spend the day in the gardens, looking at the Barry Flanagan sculpture exhibition. I did some sketching towards the end of the afternoon. Thought I'd experiment with a crazy colour hare, after my Colour Games workshop.
I was about to attempt the drawing below, the same hare from the back, when a couple of children came over to ask what I was doing. I explained, showing them what I'd done so far. Their two friends came over and joined in. They were curious about my pencils, so I gave them a quick demo-scribble in the back of my sketchbook.
I asked if they wanted to try. Well, that was it. They got so excited, especially about the water brush, that they all set-to in a huddle while I chatted to their parents (who kindly offered to leave them with me for an hour or so...). They created this spread together:
We rounded off the day watching some cricket, which I know nothing about, but it was a good excuse for sitting on the grass just a bit longer.
But Sunday it was down to work: the scans have come back from that first batch of artwork I sent off a couple of weeks ago. Now the rush is to get them all cut-out in Photoshop by Wednesday night. I need to get rid of the pink paper backgrounds and replace them with flat digital colour, like the illustration at the top and below.
You can see the rough of this illustration and my pastel artwork before the cut-out job here.
My previous books with Gullane have had colour backgrounds on the covers, but been cut away to white on the inside, but I feel this one is calling out to be more funky. I'm having fun seeing how they look on the colours - it makes them really come together.
SketchCrawl North was invited to take part in the Sheaf Park Festival last Saturday. The event was perfect for this month's SketchCrawl: there was so much to draw, including these fantastic Latin American dancers in wonderfully colourful costumes, which I tried to capture using my Inktense watercolour pencils:
It was a scorchingly hot day: perfect for the occasion. This event was a little different for us sketchers though - for the first time, we had a stall:
We didn't have much time to prepare anything fancy, but thanks to Andrea Joseph, who brought lots of laminated sketches to hang like bunting, it looked fabulous.
We tied some of our sketchbooks to the stand with string, so people could look through them and Matthew Midgley had mounting some of his favourite drawings from past SketchCrawls onto mountboard:
It was great to have a 'base camp'. We took turns sketching out around the festival and manning the stand, where we signed up some new members, ate ice cream and drew the tea stand opposite:
There were several live music acts, so I got to draw musicians again, like a mini SketchJam. My favourite was a band called Johnny and the Prison Didn't Help Boys. I always love sketching to music: I was singing along while I was drawing:
The dog show was really funny. The highlight was when a cute, little Jack Russell won the 'Best Trick' category by doing a pirouette on his back legs, to much cheering from the crowd. Dogs are impossible to draw though - they were so excited, they didn't hold still for a moment:
It was a prolific sketch-day, including a morning of drawing the comings and goings outside Sheffield station...
...as well as the festival in the afternoon. I can't fit everything in here, but you can see the rest of my sketches from the day in the Picture Gallery, as well as other people's work on the Sketchcrawl North group page.
This is a short film made about August's SketchCrawl at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park:
Yes, following on from the regular SketchCrawl, then our SketchJam idea, we SketchCrawl North sketchers have coined another new term: the SketchDrool. It combines two of my favourite pastimes - drawing and eating!
Last Friday night, despite unbelievably torrential rain, a small group of us met up to go to the preview of a new exhibition of screen prints by Mick Marsten, at Pete McKee's A Month of Sundays gallery in Sheffield.
It was really nice stuff. We thought that the foul weather might put people off though, but the show was packed. It was nice to bump into several people we knew and chew the fat over a glass of wine and some nibbly things.
Afterwards, we crossed the road to Otto's restaurant, where we had booked a table for a drawing evening. I took along my Inktense watercolour pencils, my trusty waterbrush and just a tiny A6 sketchbook. I managed to grab one sketch for each section of the meal.
Serious food-sketchers, like sketch-buddy Matthew Midgley, did their drawings before they ate, but I couldn't resist getting stuck in while it was hot, and only stopped to draw half way through.
As soon as my main course arrived, I realised that mushroom risotto was not the wisest choice...
It tasted delicious but was mainly white, not to mention consisting primarily of impossible-to-draw rice! I was happy to stop and sketch though, as it was very rich and I was getting seriously stuffed.
While we waited for our food to settle, we had some more wine and moved places, so we could chat to new people and have new angles to sketch from. This is Moya, who I met at my clay modelling evenings:
After a bit, the waiter came to try and tempt us with the desert menu but, though puddings might have been fun to sketch, we all groaned and took the sensible option of ordering coffees instead.
It was great fun to try something a little different and worked especially well for having a combination of stalwarts like myself, Andrea Joseph and Matthew, but also some first-timers. It was a lovely evening and an idea I'm sure we will repeat.
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 8/15/2012
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On Monday I was in libraries again, for the Summer Reading Challenge, doing events similar to the series of summer workshops I've been doing in Sheffield, but just a bit further up the road, in Derbyshire.
It was a very good thing I wasn't far afield, as I was a complete idiot that morning: I left my folder by the front door at home, the one with all the artwork I use to talk around. Not good. I realised my mistake as I was walking into Sheffield station, but there was no time to go back - my train was due in 15 minutes.
As usual, John came to the rescue. He drove my folder all the way to Brimington Library for me and hand-delivered it. He was so quick off the mark that he beat me there - what a hero!
This is me using some of the roughs that were in the folder, to explain the process of designing the big bear in Bears on the Stairs. I also showed them a piece of big, pastel artwork from Stinky! and read them Dragon's Dinner, deconstructing my illustrations as I went. Then it was time to get stuck into some drawing.
The children first learnt how to choose faces and body language to communicate emotions...
...then we all created lots of angry, sad, frightened, shocked, sarcastic and grumpy cats, dogs, bears, owls, warthogs, monkeys, hamsters etc.
After lunch my minder and I nipped down the road to Staveley Library, where I did it all again.
Both the workshops were really well attended: we had to squeeze everyone in, so a big thank you to the guys at the library service for their help with publicity.
We woke up to a glorious day on Friday, despite a very so-so forecast the day before. The sun streamed into the studio and the sky through the veluxes was faultlessly blue. As I went through the mornings emails, I thought sadly about the day ahead: my re-roughs are all in and my paper is all cut to size and ready, so my next job is to pull down all the blinds, so the studio is good and dark, and then stand at the lightbox for about 2 days, tracing my line-work up onto the pastel paper.
I looked out at the sun again and over to the lightbox. There was no real contest - it took only about 3 seconds for me to decide to bunk off instead.
So John and I packed a rucksack with books, sketchbooks and bananas and walked to the Botanical Gardens, where we laid out a blanket and chilled in the dappled shade of a tree.
It was so nice to have no agenda for a few hours. I finished my book-group tome (in the nick of time), did some sketches of the trees and people watched. Much better idea!
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 7/24/2012
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We picked the perfect weekend for our Peak District SketchCrawl, much against the odds, I must say!
Given how it's been this summer so far, I was getting worried that we'd be rained off, but it was lovely sunshine at 9am on Sunday morning, when a small group of us met at Sheffield Station and took the train off into the hills.
Half an hour later, at the tiny station of Edale, we got out and walked up the track to the new, state-of-the-art visitor's centre. We sketched there for 45 minutes, while we waited for other people to arrive.
On a different day I might have had a go at the unusual, rounded building, with its lovely 'green roof', featuring a stepped waterfall which runs down through it's centre, then cascades over the doorway and down into a little rock pool in front of the entrance.
But I had psyched myself up for countryside, so felt in the mood for hills not architecture.
So I perched myself rather precariously on a dry-stone wall in the car park and painted this:
As you might have gathered, I enjoyed every single second of the symposium and was on a high from the moment I woke each morning, to the moment I fell into bed, often at midnight.
One of the many highlights was our trip to the Mercado: a big enclosed market, surrounded by lots of individual stalls, selling everything from mangos to bongos. Here we are above, sketching on the steps outside.
The indoor market was great for pressies, and we had good fun 'bongoing it up' on the steps outside. These are my friends and fellow sketchers Inma Serrano and Scott Renk, and you might spot someone else, wiggling in the background...
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 5/30/2012
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I've been having a lot of fun just lately, but it's been a bit crazy over the last few days...
On Saturday we had another SketchCrawl, this time in Chesterfield. It couldn't have been more different to last week's in Buxton, where we had to keep scuttling indoors because of the freezing cold. This time we were scuttling into the shade, as it was so fabulously, brain-fryingly hot.
Here are a few sketches from the day that John scanned in for me. The top one is watercolour and black conte, the others are my Inktense watercolour pencils. I'll post more later, but things have been so busy lately and I still have more things to do than time to do it (I shouldn't be doing this now - I should be getting on with my roughs!!).
On Sunday John and I went out walking, making the most of the sunshine, then on Monday and Tuesday I was up super-early to catch the 7.15 train to Selby, to visit the children at Longman's Hill Primary School.
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You may be wondering why I've not told you how it's going with my new book...
Well, it's mainly because there's been another short delay. My publisher had some new ideas for changes which I wanted to see before I got too stuck into the detailed drawings.
I've been waiting for final layout sheets to come through, showing their revised ideas about the story's pacing and which text and images they'd like to appear on which pages. They arrived towards the end of last week, but I haven't made enough progress to show you yet, as I spent most of this week working in Nottingham, rather than in the studio.
I'll tell you about that another time, but for now, here's a selection of the sketches I did on the train during my 4 days travelling back and forth. Which brings me to my near disaster, first thing Friday morning...
I took part in yet another brilliant sketching event on Tuesday night.
By 7pm, the back room at The Greystones was heaving with sketchers, pencils at the ready... And we had to be pretty quick off the mark, as we had to squeeze no less than 8 poses into just 2 hours.
It was even more tricky this time round too, not just because we had only 5, 10 or 15 minutes per sketch (!), but because several poses involved anything up to 5 Roller Girls on stage at once.
3 Comments on Sheffield Steel Rollergirls: illuSKATE this!, last added: 4/28/2012
After the fun of the recent SketchJam at the White Lion, Les and I hooked up again and took our sketchbooks to the Shakespeare pub to draw one of the events at the Sheffield Folk Festival.
It took a while for things to get going, then suddenly the tiny bar exploded into music. Flutes, accordions, squeeze-boxes, a fiddle, a sax, guitars... you name it, they were whipped out of bags and we were soon tapping our toes and warming up our pencils!
Everyone was crammed into such a small space that we quickly got to know our neighbours, some of whom were musicians, some morris dancers. They were all very friendly indeed and, as usual, very interested to see what Les and I were up to!
We've not been SketchJamming for ages, so when we heard they had an evening of Carolan music at the White Lion pub just down the road, a few of us decided to head over there.
For those who've not come across a SketchJam before, it's a term we sketchers invented for a live music SketchCrawl.
It's great fun drawing to music but can be quite a challenge, as of course musicians are inclined to move about! The harp and whistle players below were a gift though, as they kept very still, though the songs didn't last long, so it was still a bit of a race:
Another thing I particularly like about SketchJamming in the informal setting of a pub, especially if, as on this occasion, it is a fairly small and casual gathering, is the way it becomes a general experience of sharing, making contact between two different forms of creative expression.
T
Last week, John and I took the train down to London for a couple of days. You might have noticed that we've had several brilliant trips out recently. I am rewarding myself for working so hard over the last month and doing 22 days of workshops, talks or school visits out of 31! Pretty full-on: fun but exhausting, especially with all the travelling about.
We've been especially lucky with how this bit of 'reward' time has coincided with a heat wave. It seemed wicked to spent too much time inside, so we took the boat down the Thames to Greenwich, where we pottered and chilled.
Next morning though, we spurned the sun, leaped on the tube and got down to the real business of the trip: the Hockney exhibition at the RA. I've been so looking forward to it since we booked the tickets back in January.
Not this last Saturday, but the one before, I went out to play with my SketchCrawl team again. We've already drawn so much of Sheffield since we began in 2010, that this time we took the train up to Leeds for a change, where the Sheffield sketchers met up with our SketchCrawl chums from all around the region.
First stop was Leeds Art Gallery:
I started off with this statue, but soon decided it was way too nice a day to be inside - the glorious sunshine seemed like an extra special treat, given it was still March, so I soon headed out to sit on the steps in front of the gallery and drew John drawing the Town Hall, which was a few doors down:
Today I am working at the Imperial war Museum in Manchester, running illustration workshops to tie in with their current exhibition Once Upon a Wartime. But, since today is Saturday, when I should by rights be out playing with my chums, I took yesterday off instead and John and I went out for the day.
It was once again gloriously sunny, so we drove up to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the new Miro exhibition. Fantastic! The indoor gallery has a mix of old and new work: some of the big, colourful prints, but lots of sculpture, big and small. My favourites were the huge, black bronzes. Three lovely ones filled one gallery, the rest were on the lawns outside. They were so dramatic and often quite humorous.
I sat and attempted to paint a couple. I did get quite grumpy though, as the sun might have been warm, but the wind was fierce and really cold. It kept trying to whip my book away, which meant it was effectively 'jogging' me and making me splat paint in all the wrong places.
I have at last come to the end of my crazy, log-jam of school visits and so I've been delighted to have such a sunny weekend to chill out and celebrate!
Yesterday we spent the day SketchCrawling in Leeds (more later, when I've scanned everything in) and today we travelled across to the hills to the north of Sheffield and walked near the Strines Dam. The sun was glorious all day long.
It was a pretty lazy kind of walk, with as much sitting around gazing at the views as anything. John did his usual eye-resting and I did lots of very quick sketches in my Inktense watercolour pencils.
Extra early, warm, sunny days like this feel so special and precious (to us poor Brits anyway), you appreciate them all the more.
I couldn't resist this lovely old nun. She was sitting across the aisle in the row behind me, on my train coming back towards Sheffield last week, after a couple of nights away from home, working firstly with Reading's Educational Library Service and then at St Nicholas Primary School in Twyford.
Yes, I'm still travelling all over the place at the moment, clocking up the rail-miles and filling up the sketchbooks. I've had two stints of staying away overnight: I was only in my own bed for one night between the Reading trip and a couple of days up in Huddersfield area, doing mostly lectures.
Do you recognise the man above? By strange coincidence, I found myself opposite him the week previous and posted a close up of his face last time. Given I'm doing one-off journeys at random times, it was odd to not just be on the same train, but in the same carriage and only a few seats away! I couldn't decide if he was watching me draw him or just staring in my direction.
I am still waiting for my page layouts to come back from Gullane, so am spending most my time writing at the moment (when I'm not answering emails anyway). I'm working with John on the Koala stories I mentioned last week. Turns out John is great at plot ideas and moving stories on when they stall. I'm best at dialogue and characterisation, we make a good team!
Anyway, there's nothing specific about that I can share right now, so I thought you might like to see a few more pics more my Kerala sketchbooks. These were also in Tellicherry. We were there over the Christmas weekend and there was a blessing happening in one of the houses in the village. It was taking place in the garden, where there was a small temple, and was to bring good fortune to the house and village for the forthcoming year. It was an evening event, so at sunset John, myself and our 2 friends were guided to the house by torchlight, through a series of back alleys. It got increasing black and hard to see our footing on the uneven ground and our guide got lost and had to ask directions twice!
We arrived just as the dancing and drumming was starting. People from all the neighbouring houses were there, sitting around two sides of the garden on plastic chairs. We were immediately shown to seats at the front, which made me feel a little guilty, as unbelievers, but I didn't complain too much, as it also gave me the perfect vantage point to sketch.
My new-improved, doggie-story has now gone off to the publisher (cross fingers...). I probably won't hear anything for a week or so at least. I am still waiting for my other publisher to send me the suggested page layouts for the next book I'm to start work on any day now: between us, we have to tame all the work I did last year and squeeze it into a 32 page picture book!
It's weird having a lull just before you know you are about to be really busy. I have a couple of events later this week, but school visits won't really kick off until next month, so John and I have been going through all the bookings I've got coming up, making sure timetables are all resolved and trains are all booked.
I'm also using this pocket of time to write down another idea that's been knocking around in my head, about a koala, but that's way too new to share for now.
What I can share though, are some more pages from my Kerala sketchbooks: I've at last got time to do more scanning.
4 Comments on The Lull Before the Storm..., last added: 1/27/2012
I just love drawing markets and what better place than India? It's such a great excuse to get in amongst local people, doing their everyday jobs, and as soon as you draw, they welcome you into their lives just a little, and that makes it so much more rewarding and memorable.
These sketches were done on my very last afternoon, in Angamaly, near Cochin. I started with the veg stall: stuffed with sacks and crates of veg in all shapes, sizes and colours, many of which I'd never seen before.
This is Ajilal, who was the man taking the orders and the money for the veg. His fellow workers nominated him to be drawn and then ribbed him shamelessly throughout. When I was done, John and I were fed as many finger-bananas (literally finger-size) as we could eat, while someone nipped my sketchbook to the photocopy shop.
2 Comments on An Afternoon Drawing in the Market, last added: 1/11/2012
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 11/11/2011
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I had rather of a day of experimentation when I was out and about on Tuesday.
First up: I took a couple of the Derwent Inktense pencils and a waterbrush with me on the train to Wilmslow, for a change, to try new techniques. In the top sketch, I tried to be less tight and concentrate more on mark-making.
The man below clocked me drawing him immediately:
I didn't show him the sketch, since I wasn't sure he approved, but I showed the brother and sister in the notes. The little girl got out some colouring pencils of her own, so I dug out one of my bookmarks for them: another of those nice little experiences with strangers.
these are short poses, in general they are from 5 minutes to 1 minute (most of them). they are all mostly about A4 size sketches. in some of them there is a previous dry blot in gouache..
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 11/7/2011
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The SketchCrawl team met again this weekend. We got together at Sheffield Midland Station on Sunday morning.
We had a great turn-out, with some people coming from further afield to join us. Everyone was chatting excitedly and raring to go.
We drank coffee in the Ritazza cafe in the forecourt for the first hour, sketching people, the station building and the views through the window. I warmed up on Matthew:
Then I did a quickie looking out at this lovely autumnal tree. I tried out the Inktense watercolour pencils Derwent gave us - the
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0 Comments on SketchCrawl in Leeds City Centre as of 1/1/1900
Just the sort of day that I used to love when i was doing remedial reading and reading instruction. Except that my drawings were pretty cock-eyed!