New Idea: the Tour de Sketch

By Lynne Chapman

On Sunday, we tried out a new sketching idea in Derbyshire, just outside Sheffield. Instead of our usual monthly SketchCrawl, we tried it on bikes. A group called Pedal Ready, associated with the Peak Park, sponsored us by providing free bike hire, which was great, because it meant everyone could have a go. 24 people turned up at 9.30am at Hassop's ex-railway station.


The 1st sketching stop was just 10 minutes away at the old Thornbridge Station:

Apparently, in its day, it was a private station for the exclusive use of the residents of the adjacent Thornbridge Hall (!). Next we continued to a spot where the path opened to lovely, long views across rolling farmland:
We had a longer run next, to where there was a twisted, old birch tree in a picnic area: We rode back to the cafe at Hassop Station for lunch, as it was too chilly to picnic, then had another slightly longer run afterwards, out to where the trail ends, at Coombs Road viaduct. The sun was trying to come out and it was getting quite warmer, so we sat on the grass, beside a field full of springy, new lambs, and spent about 50 minutes on our final sketch of the day: Then it was back to Hassop for a well-earned cuppa, where we sat round a big table and slowly passed all our sketchbooks around the circle. It was a real feast: big books, tiny books, all kinds of styles, rich with ink and watercolour, charcoal and pencil (as usual, I will post other people's work up in my Picture Gallery as they send it in. We'll certainly be trying that idea again!

Sketchbook project: on tour in the U.S.

By Anne-Marie Perks

In this post I thought I would share a peek into the sketchbook I submitted for Sketchbook Project 2011. The theme I chose was Nighttime Stories. I knew I wanted to work in black and white with touches of one or two colours, and I knew that I wanted a narrative thread to hold it all together.

At right is one page of my storyboard thumbnails outlining the theme loosely to a Native American myth on bringing the first light to the world.



In this tale, animals and people could change between being human or animal at will and the moon was a woman who hung upside down in the sky. Above, the ravens love their blackness and wish to keep the world dark.


An interesting challenge was to show the human form connected to their animal forms. Here, the Wolf People want warmth and light and are dressed in their wolf skins.

Above, the confrontation between Raven and Wolf as Moon Woman looks on. Wolf had gone to Moon Woman to ask how they could bring light to the world.

The battle between the Ravens and Wolf to free Moon Woman's brother, the Sun from the cave they had imprisoned him in.

Interestingly, 28,839 blank sketchbooks were sent out from the Art House Co-op and just under 10,000 sketchbooks were sent back. These books will be kept in a permanent collection at the Brooklyn Library, cataloged and each has an ISBN number. It is amazing to think of original art being something you can check out. Currently, the exhibit has been in Brooklyn, New York and Austin, Texas - next stop Portland, Maine. By the time the tour wraps up at the end of July 2011, the exhibit will have been all across the United States. A tour diary is on the website along with the portfolios and sketchbook submissions of all the artists that participated. It has been truly exciting to be part of this project reminding me that I can do a lot of work in a short amount of time when needed. Follow the link to see more of my sketchbook.

Sketchbook!

By Paul Morton

Between commissioned work I like to find time for using my sketchbook/notebooks. I've always carried one of these with me ever since leaving college and it sometimes becomes my second brain.

Ideas are jotted down and developed, stored like in Dumbledore's pensive, and surprisingly re-discovered and used years later.

At the moment I want to draw children, and in particular one little boy for a wordless Picture Book I'm working on, set in a garden.

I need to draw and draw until the shape of the limbs, the folds and bulk of the clothes and the expressions, come naturally to me.

These are some early examples from the last 2 weeks, I've a long way to go before becoming close to Shirley Hughes!