Manchester sketchcrawl

Sketching the River Irwell sat on Calatrava's Trinity Bridge

 Yesterday,  I joined the Manchester,  Yorkshire,  and Society of Architectural Illustrators (SAI) for a sketchcrawl in Manchester. It was a surprisingly blue skied sunny day, but with an icy wind, which made outdoor sketching a challenge. As you can see from my sketches below, I alternated between outside and inside locations.

River Irwell from Trinity bridge. Sketch 1

I accidently bought a scone when I went for a warm up cuppa. Sketch 2.

Piano practice in Manchester Central Library's music library. Sketch 3.

Shivering and sketching at the end of the day. Sketch 4.

It was lovely to meet so many sketchers from all over (40+ at the interim lunch meeting) and hope to get up to Manchester and sketch again... albeit in a warmer month.

Show and tell social at the end of the day. Photo by Hakym.

Focusing on something different.

Spring greenhouse ©Sue Pownall 2015

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I had a weekend away and my poor assistant has been in Queen's Veterinary School Hospital, Cambridge for surgery on her elbows. She now needs lots of love and cuddles to help her recover.

My assistant is feeling sorry for herself.

I have mainly been creative in a photographic way, apart from a couple of sketches. The above one was drawn at my friend's house in Cheltenham over the course of 2 cups of tea, finishing just in time for breakfast. (sorry the scan has lost some of the watercolour details and turned it pink too). We have had surprisingly clear blue skies, which has made the UK spring look prettier. Here's a few examples... and a fire as the nights are still cold.

Cheltenham ©Sue Pownall 2015

Reflections in yellow, Cambridge. ©Sue Pownall 2015

Bath. ©Sue Pownall 2015

A single stem. ©Sue Pownall 2015

Abingdon. ©Sue Pownall 2015

 What have you done this week?

Print workshop induction

I'm now a member of the print workshop at Cuckoo Farm Studios, Colchester.  Consequently, on Thursday I had my induction to use the workshop unsupervised in the future. Whilst there I took the opportunity to have a 2nd attempt at etching. I used one of my new etching needles, which is quite heavy and a dream to draw with into the hard ground. I redid the oak leaves I'd attempted to etch on my workshop, you can see those results here.

Learning points:

1. I need to clean the ink off the plates more, as you can see from the print above there is a lot of ink on the background.
2. I need to pay more attention to the composition. Despite it being an interesting subject (well I think so), as this print doesn't work due to the shape the leaves create... I could use a clean hard ground to work more into this plate, but I'm not sure that will improve a badly thought out compostion.

What printmaking lessons have you learnt?