Sketchcrawling in Sheffield

I joined the Sketch Crawl North group in Sheffield yesterday for a day of wandering, coffee, food and drawing. I stumbled across the group through the Urban Sketchers network and was excited to see what a sketchcrawl was like. It took me back to being in Spain, even though it was many degrees cooler, and I realised that sharing some drawing time with a group of people was just what I'd been missing! 

So, with the snow outside and the company of fellow enthusiasts inside, here's what we got up to... 

Starting off with a coffee in Cafe Nero

We drew before taking in a visit to the Millenium Galleries

Then it was lunch at the Frog & Parrot

Where I saved this newsprint that was resting under my chips!
I thought it would be good to use for collage in another drawing sometime, sauce marks and all!

Wine, tables and of course some Sheffield Cutlery!

Then a final stop at the Showroom before sharing our day of mark making with one another.

It was a really great day! Very nice to meet another bunch of enthusiastic scribblers and I'll be looking to attend as many meets like this as I can throughout the year, thank you Sketch Crawl North!

New Year, New Project

It's nearing the end of my Christmas break and in between seeing friends and family I've been thinking about my upcoming project. Today I made a mood board of some of the objects, ideas and images that have been inspiring me:

I've been looking a lot at the work of Christo and wondering how I might apply the techniques he has used to that of leather. I will be using the words wrapping, binding, stretching and forming in this project to explore the properties of materials and ideas.

When visiting Nottingham Castle a few months ago, I noticed that they had a applied a similar Christo-technique to their outer statues as part of the LaceWorks exhibition: 

They are be no means as successful as any of his monument works:

and it is this attention to shape and form that I wish to apply to my designs.

As part of my visual research, I will be considering;

broken busts, 

mummified feet,

surface manipulation

and textural form

I wish to consider sustainability, through working with objects that are often thrown away and through a process of concealing, wrapping and reforming look to be creating an exciting new range of objects and experiments.