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 What a difference a day makes up here in these hills. Or Peaks to be specific. I made these two drawings over a weekend. I was participating in the Buxton Art Trail weekend - where artists take over the town. with their creativity, and use shops and cafes and homes to exhibit, and hopefully sell, their work.
 I was upstairs in the Old Clubhouse pub. A venue we use for our Dr Sketchy events. It has the best view in the town, looking right out at the beautiful Buxton Opera House. The Saturday was bright, blue skies, sunny and very quiet.
 The Sunday was throwing it down. A very wet and chilly Buxton in July. I'm not sure whether people just wanted to get out of the rain or see my work, but I don't mind either way. I had the loveliest afternoon and met loads of really nice people. Hello if you're one of them.
You never know how these events are going to go. But after doing my fair share of them, I've learnt it's never about how much work you sell. Of course, that's great, it's the best, but it's also about lots of other things you get out of them; meeting new people, sharing your work, talking about your work. Plus, I signed up two fabulous new models for my alternative life drawing sessions and got two sketches of the Opera House. And who knows what else may come.

Get yourself out there.

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Amongst all the other illustration work I do, I also co-run Dr Sketchy Sheffield and, so, being the sketching half of the team (my co-running partner is from the performance arts), I create the poster artwork. It's one of my favourite things to illustrate. Because it makes me feel closer to the poster artists, from days gone by, who's work I adore. I wish there were more call for poster artists. These days it's all done digitally so I like to buck that trend with purely illustrated posters (and I wouldn't have a clue how to do it digitally).

Now once we've set our theme for our Dr Sketchy event the idea for the poster image pretty much comes to me straight away. Sometimes without even having to think about it. Really, it's just there. I see it - the whole poster - fully formed. I then just need to put it onto paper.

Our next event (next Saturday, at the Greystones, Sheffield!) will be a celebration of dance. We have performers from different genres of dance modelling and, erm, dancing for us. We have a belly dancer, a breakdancer, a bhangra dancer amongst others. So, already I knew I had to get that info into the drawing. The first and original thought was of the kind of drawing in the image above. I think it's important to go with that initial idea if it has presented itself to you. I love those 'consequences' drawings. I've heard them called other things and somebody once told me that they were known as 'exquisite cadaver' drawings. I think that's such a great name, which conjures up all sorts of weird and wonderful images, so I'll be sticking with that.

I made a few exquisite cadaver sketches, like the one above, to try it out. To see if it worked. I'll be honest with you, I think the trial run above is still my favourite. I guess that's because it was the most spontaneous. Then when I'd got one that I felt would work as a poster image I sketched it out onto a 'proper' bit of paper. I always add the image first, leaving room for the text. Sometimes I will play around with where I want to place the image. I did with this one - I tried her on both sides of the page and central before settling on this composition.

For the text I always quickly research (Google) posters or fonts until I find something that fits. For example, I'll Google 'Bollywood poster fonts' or some such thing. This one was a combination of various fonts because of the variety of dance genres. When I find a font I like I loosely copy it. I don't measure out the letters, nothing technical happens, I just copy it by eye (is that even a saying? It looks odd now it's typed out). I don't want it to look exactly like the fonts I find. I want it to be my own version of them.

Anyway, that's a little (ish) explanation of how I create my posters. Now anyone want a poster illustration? I'm for hire. I'm always for hire.

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Which brings me on to our sketchers. Not only are the photos stunning, but the artwork produced on our evenings is insanely good and so varied too. You can see what I mean in our Facebook Group HERE. Plus, when all the sketchers leave saying they had a great time then that's how you measure success, I reckon.

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Last Saturday we, at Dr Sketchy Sheffield, held an event celebrating the art of tattoos. I'd been wanting to do a tattoo themed event ever since I took over the running of the branch with my co-co-ordinator Lara Gothique. The idea of drawing people who are covered in drawings really does it for me.

Plus, it was a great opportunity to get some male models on board. We haven't had anywhere enough guys modelling for us - although they were pretty hard to convince. Who'd have thought these inked up guys would be so shy?

We had a great mix of guys and girls. I did these black and white drawings at the event. I added colour at home, later.

The other great thing about being the artist, in our partnership, is that I get to set some drawing exercises. My exercise for this event was to draw the (model's) body through the tattoos alone. It was more difficult to do than I'd imagined, and I still ended up adding some body lines to my attempt (above).

Despite my car braking down en-route, and being totally stressed out by that by time I got there, I still managed to get a whole load of sketches done. Many more than this in fact, but the rest were on a larger A3 sketchbook - and I'll have to get them scanned by somebody with an A3 scanner.

Plus, if that's not impressive enough, where else do you get to draw a tattooed Reverend? I'm guessing nowhere. I may be wrong, but if I were a betting woman I'd put money on it.

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A couple more of my posters for our Dr Sketchy Sheffield events. I just love doing this poster artwork. I've been wondering why I enjoy it so much. It's obvious really, that mix of illustration and text really floats my boat. Maybe I should hire myself out as a poster artist. Have an event that you need a poster for? I'm your lady.
You can read a post about one of my poster artist heroes, the legendary Toulouse Lautrec, and see more of my own creations HERE.

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Here's another sketchbook that I've just about finished. I'm not sure of the brand, I bought it because I wanted a different page shape and size from the Moleskine and this had nice thick paper too. I've really enjoyed working on a more panoramic (?) page and will need to replace it with something similar if I can't find another of these.

I made the top drawing at a field day that had all sorts of events going on. I'm really happy with some of the lines I achieved in this drawing. I used a fine liner and a calligraphy pen to get them. And, the one below is from one of our Dr Sketchy events.

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Guys, I've decided; I'm running away with the circus. I don't know how long I'll be gone (probably about a week) but I have to do it. I've tried everything else and none of it has worked out. So, it's the only thing left to do. See you when I get back. Unless I decide that circus life is for me.

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I think this was my favourite sketch from last Friday night's Dr. Sketchy. The scaling is all wrong; the hands, for one, are way too small but I don't really care. I'm a little bit obsessed with tattoos at the moment. I'm loving drawing people too. So what could be better than drawings on people? Not much.

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Where does the time go, eh? I've such a huge backlog of stuff to post; drawings from one of Lynne Chapman's workshops; the International Sketchcrawl day illustrations; an exciting new collaboration; a step by step update; details about an exhibition in France I've been invited to participate in (SO very excited); a couple of secret projects that I am definitely NOT allowed to mention (can I keep my mouth shut?!);  and all manner of other bits and bobs.

For now here's a couple of sketches from a Dr Sketchy I attended the other evening. These are always such fun events. I hope that shines through. They are just a great excuse to play with your pens.

Back to regular posting tomorrow.

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Should anyone be interested, Dr. Sketchy Sheffield are holding this little event in co-ordination with Tramlines festival on Friday night at Sheffield's Millenium Gallery. I'll be there. And, yes, that is one of my drawings on the poster!

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Well, it seems that, this week my blog will be dedicated to lovely ladies all things Dr. Sketchy. I have so many sketches to post. I never usually come home from the Dr. Sketchy events with more than a couple of 'blog worthy' drawings but this time I've got a good handful (!).

The sketches on the blue lined paper are from my 'warm up' notebook. It's where I limber up my sketching hand. Life drawing is all new to me so I need a space to do that. For each pose I will do a quick sketch in the warm up book. Then if I like the pose and the composition and feel it will make a good drawing I resketch it (from life) in my Moleskine. Then when I get home I play around with the Moleskine sketches. Pimp them up, if you like.

So that's what you have here; above, the warm up sketch and below the Moleskine version of the lovely Miss Pixie Parfait.

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