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!

Baby Goes Baaaa! - creating the artwork

By Lynne Chapman

I started on the pastel artwork for my latest book Baby Goes Baaaa! last week - yikes!

Fortunately, it's all going pretty well so far. It's taken such a long time to get to this stage that I'm really enjoying getting down to it.

To keep on schedule, I have to do one page a day, but that's not as tricky as it sounds, as none of the images have backgrounds this time - we are going to drop bright pastel colours in later.

Here are the ones I've managed so far. Egmont has kindly given permission for me to blog the entire process so, if you are interested, you can see in-progress images and read more about the project every couple of days on my blog An Illustrator's Life For Me!

Wish me luck for this week - I'm working on a baby hedgehog's first kiss today...

SketchJam in Sheffield

By Lynne Chapman
Last week, we had another go at the SketchJam idea. It was rather louder on the ear than the old fellas we drew last time: this time it was a rock band!
I'm not really one for rock music these days, but it turned out to be brilliant fun, and I was amazed at all the rock classics that I knew. I'm not really one for rock music these days, but it turned out to be brilliant fun, and I was amazed at all the rock classics that I knew.

When the music eventually wound up and I finally made a dash for the loo, I looked at my watch and realised it was midnight - we'd been drawing for nearly 3 hours!

There are more drawings on my blog if you're interested.

February Sketchcrawl in London

By Anne-Marie Perks

Clare Tovey, Anita Loughrey, Bridget Strevens-Marzo and myself, met at the Museum of Childhood as growing throngs of school children collected at the front entrance. All the children, teachers and parents added a wonderful energy to the venue, making it at times hard to choose between sketching the constantly moving children or the incredible exhibits throughout the museum. I was mesmerized by the old wooden rocking horse above because of the lovely organic line formed by the shape of the horse and the beautifully crafted details still visible in the wood on the horse's anatomy.

I wanted to spend more time in the 'costume' area of the museum and will definitely go back. This amazing silk dress had intricate embroidered flowers and birds all through the bodice, sleeves and skirt. The small bespoke leather shoe went with it. Next to this exhibit were a range of shoes from different ages the children could try on.


Above is a couple of examples of 'handmade' toys from history. I made rag dolls as a child and with my own daughters, so loved the plaited wheat dolls. As I was drawing the cat, children were sitting all around me drawing the same toys from the same case guessing which was the oldest toy. I can tell you it was the small flat wooden doll from Egypt.

The following three drawings were done by Anita Loughrey, and this was her very first sketchcrawl and the first time she had done any observational drawing in years. I think we may have a convert!
Above, a big red train, 1920 - 1930.

A sampling from all the great teddy bears from different ages. Each bear had great distinctive faces.

Fantasy Flyer, Anita's first drawing of the day. As we passed our books around at lunch we spoke about the great comments said by the children and the unveiled excitement that showed through their body language, movement and noise level in general inside the museum. It was a great day and we are looking forward to the next one!

Not shown, but hope to follow up with images from Clare Tovey and Bridget Strevens-Marzo.

Sorting the mess and 'deskavation'

By Bridget Strevens Marzo

Last year was busy, crazily so at times, and there was no time for pondering projects.  

Just one commission which I've mentioned before.  A cube-shaped bookshelf of seven mini board books of rhymes, Ma Petite Bibliothèque de Sept Comptines à Chanter, published next month withBayard. 

My illustrations to Mini Racer by Kristy Dempsey, are also due out in February 2011 but they were mostly done in 2008-9.

I've talked already about clearing out my parent's home.  Many of us have to do that at least once in our lives.  Are we ever prepared for it?   I groped for some kind of structure for dealing with it all.  
First I archived my father's paintings.  In his very limited spare time, Mick helped me put online a web site I wrote about my dad's work.

But I had to tackle the real physical stuff by myself.  My father's wall-to-ceiling bookcases of dusty old tomes nearly undid me.  I thought of old Soames in the Forsyth Saga,  killed by a bookcase falling on top of him.  I gave myself a deadline, setting sights on a a time when I'd be free from some of the weight.  
Auctioneers, a local charity, and clearance people came for the final haul.  I had never appreciated what an essential role such people play in the human ecological cycle; excavating, digesting and recycling for other lives. 
And what a lot of stuff there was - half a century of my father and mother's lives,  both makers and hoarders in their very different ways.

I kept asking myself,  how much more space is there in our world, to fill?
Anyway it got me thinking about creative processes and how much it's about sorting out, structuring, giving meaning, throwing away, bringing to life.  
Our shrinking spaces may be one reason why increasing numbers of contemporary artists work with archives.   Rather than generate more stuff,  they sort.  They take some aspect of the pre-existing stuff, and invent new structures for ordering it, creating new meanings for what's already there.

And I thought about how small kids learn from structures, and want order almost more than they want information, at kindergarten.  "Chaque chose à sa place / Everything has its place"  my kids were told, encouragingly, in French maternelle school from aged 3.  ("If only that were true!" I sometimes think...)   But how kids love putting things in boxes, laying out bricks or plates, fitting one lego onto another - and breaking the order and re-inventing it too.   

Back in my home, on a much smaller scale: all the work I'd done for Mini Racer  jammed and finally broke my cheap Ikea drawer.   To sort it out, I had to spread the mess all over the floor

I've sorted and kept about a quarter of this 'archive'.  A lot has gone into paper recycling.
Really the whole process is all about making messes and sorting them out. 

I was delighted to receive last week my pile of advance copies of the US edition.  In a real sense, it's a re-ordered fragment of the mess above, condensed into a coherent, beautifully-designed and bound 32 page fly-leaf hardback.   

And bravo to all involved in helping make that happen from the first words that Kristy put on a page to send to her agent, to the editor, art director, designer, printers, not to mention the distributors and the guy who packed the box and the delivery man who knocked on my door!
But now I have to find a space for them in my house.
Better get back to excavating papers on my desk and drawing table - a repetitive task which I never quite get to the bottom of....Deskavation - a new word proposed by a listener to Broadcasting house on BBC Radio 4 today.