Snickety snick!

Hello all!  Having had one of our mates teach him the rudiments with a plastic lightsaber, my son has taken to fencing.  Whenever we've had a spare Saturday we've taken him down to White Eagles Fencing club in Bristol, which is (without wanting to be too effusive as they may be about to read this!) a really nice club.

This week I finally got round to taking my sketchbook too.  I was quite pleased with the results, enhanced you'll agree by the paisley tablecloth.

You'll perhaps note that quite a lot of these poses look quite sedate..this is because I've yet to work out a way to draw quick enough to capture what's going on when they really get into it.  Ambition for next visit is to work on lunges! 

I should also point out that the spread below isn't of a kid pointing their sabre at someone who has theirs lowered (which is surely a no-no)..they're two separate pictures…

My Green Man sketchbook

Ahh Green Man 14. Lets be honest...I was too busy on the move and having fun, (and of course frantically leading people round telling them they should be drawing - see last post!) to think of drawing myself for most of the festival.
But then on Sunday that lovely relaxed feeling came upon me, thanks almost entirely to The Gentle Good  and a nice burst of early afternoon sun, and I got a Sunday scribble on.  Here be what I did...

So here are the Gentle Good..dammit their music was beautiful, and that combined with the fact I was sat in the Walled Garden on lovely day with my favourite people by my side was kinda heady...I'll confess to nearly blubbing.

Added to the list of new favourite musicians. And then I saw one my all time favourite musicians stood by the front of the stage (least I'm pretty sure).  I was so excited I did a crap drawing of him...

Then I turned around for a quick sketch of festival peeps doing the Sunday afternoon thing. I should just say hats off for the fact that where you'd normally expect a sea of them I hardly saw anyone holding up a phone during any of the gigs I saw.  There is hope for us yet...:)

Then off we went though Einstein's Garden...which, quite aside from the fact that they asked me to work with them was probably my favourite area of the festival - I learnt so much from people who really love what they're talking about.  Here's a guy from Dig For Daiphyses, who I spent lots of time talking to ...no wait a minute I could have structured that sentence better couldn't I...

I can't mention Einstein's Garden without mentioning Poco Drom - they played every day around the same time as I was doing the SketchCrawl and were ace. I will now need some form of hypnotherapy I think though to stop me singing about monkeys living in my shoe .

 Then to Green Man Rising to draw a mystery band - only in that I failed to write down who they were.  Let me know if this was you!

Now the main stage to have my brains blown out by Anna Calvi.  Really failed to capture the fury of that performance...bloody amazing.  I would imagine quite a few people were suspiciously non-commital when talking about it with their significant others too...

One final pic, which I actually did first thing on Saturday morning when the little buggers woke me up unnaturally early. I went for a walk around a near deserted festival site with my sprogs - this is them drawing in my daughter's favourite spot under the tree by the pond by the Green Man Rising stage.

No-one likes a festival bore so I'll stop going on about it except to say thanks to everyone who made that festival happen as it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time.  I hope to be back next year, with a mission to scribble as many bands as I can and colour them in.  In the meantime if you were (or weren't) on one of my SketchCrawls I'd love to see what you drew over the weekend - please tweet them to me @samchurch_ink and or @EinsteinsGarden #sketchcrawl

Green Man 14 SketchCrawl

This year I was super chuffed to be invited to lead a 1 hour SketchCrawl (like a pub crawl but with no pubs and drawing instead of beer!) each day at the Green Man Festival...specifically round the fascinating and beautiful area of Einstein's Garden.  It would have been churlish to say no.

Hats firmly off to everyone who joined me, to the Einstein's Garden team , well, to Green Man as a whole.  You're all lovely, and I had one of the best weekends I can remember - thank you!

Anyone can organise or join in on a SketchCrawl by the way- to find out more look here: http://www.sketchcrawl.com

Edinburgh SketchCrawl/PubCrawl!

Sat 12th of July was the 44th WorldWide SketchCrawl  - you can find out a bit more about them here ...and I was raring to go.

Unfortunately (well it's all relative..) I wasn't in Bristol to join any likeminded folks...rather I was in Edinburgh punishing my liver with some very good friends on a stag weekend.

As you can perhaps imagine, much as I would have loved to sketch all day in this amazing city, I felt that a stag weekend was neither the time or the place.   So what I DID do as a compromise was get up early whilst my friends were asleep (and I should have been) and get a sneaky sketch in around the nearby streets.  I'll apologise now for the quality of the drawings and the lack of bagpipers in them (they made me want to hide in a bin!!)
FULL DISCLOSURE too: these pics were actually done across the mornings of Sat 12th AND Sun 13th between 7.00 and 9.00..I've melded them together here as they are melded in my memory! 

Both days things got off to a slow start after the night before. I plonked myself in a cafe in the hopes that tea would make me feel human again...  In truth the very first drawing I did was a moody self portrait; the cafe had mirrored walls so that I could see myself minging into infinity.  I was later forced to eat this picture to save it falling into the clutches of the enemy...

Then it was up the street to get deep with my purpose!  One thing I'm sure I'll cherish in years to come is the little notes I left myself describing how bad I was feeling at which time...

I also observed the strange phenomenon whereby if you wander the streets with a blue A4 hardback notebook in your hand, people start gathering round and thinking you're going to take them somewhere.  I was tempted to give this a go, but thought better of it...

Also had some strange songs on the brain. On Sunday I woke up rather alarmingly to 'Something Happened on the Way to Heaven' by Phil Collins, which had segued into 'Superfreakin' by Rick James come about 8.15. Coinciding with this  found lots of these Sphynxes lining the roofs around St Giles' Cathedral.  I am not sure quite what the thinking behind big boobed lady-lions is...

Do you like tourists?  Do you like statues? Then you'll LOVE the latest edition of 'Tourists and Statues'...available now...

...this month with free 'Tourguides and Quaint Alleys' special pullout!!

By about 9.00 on both mornings several things were starting to happen:

1: Breakfast started seeming like a really good idea 

2: Tourists really started filling the streets, and I became increasingly baffled by the number of people photographing EVERYTHING but looking at not much.

  Being a a noble scribbler I felt quite smug for a moment, but my headache (and the fact that I'd probably have snapped a few things if my camera was working) stopped me shaking my head in disbelief too much.

And 3: I decided it was time to get back, but decided to do one last drawing first.  This was a bad idea.  I was struck by how many statues of becloaked gents there were seemingly watching down over the citizens of the city.  Tried to quickly capture the essence of this but wound up drawing a guy with bunny ears instead.  That's the way the artist crumbles I guess!

Then it was back to the group for wandering, tours and occasional drinking.  My inability to handle alcohol aside, the weekend was pretty relaxed - we spent most of the time wandering around Edinburgh taking it in, and I have to be honest I was enjoying the sights and being in the company of really good friends so much I didn't really want to be drawing all the time.  Got a few in before I fell asleep on the journey back to Bristol though...

Sketchiness!

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking 'Sam, how come you don't do no sketches about town no more?'.  Surely it can't all be moustaches and pointing animals?  

Well in truth, yes it largely is at the moment.  But I have been doing a fair bit of observational drawing on the sly too.  Here is a quick sketch of a guy who walked past the pub I was sat in the other day.  Yes the cigarette was that long.  

This is a holding picture whilst I riffle through my sketchbooks to scan in the fruits of my labours...more soon...

My new look

If Loreal call again, tell them they'll just have to leave a message like everyone else.  www.galleryofmo.co.uk

Mo Live drawing!!

As I'm nothing if quick off the mark - here's some news about the cracking night I had, er, last Tuesday at  Movember 13's launch night at Koko in Camden!

I've gobbed off about Movember very recently, but I'll do it again...last year they raised (if memory serves) £92 million worldwide to raise awareness and fund research into Prostate and Testicular Cancer, and are now focussing their attentions on mental health as well...can't be bad.  So I was proud to boot on down to London (along with regular partner in crime Lauren Tobia) to be one for the artists doing live Gallery of Mo portraits for their launch night.

Before I go on, I have to confess to robbing many of these photos from GAllery of Mo's facebook page - check them all HERE!   The rest come from Lauren Tobia - click here! YOU CAN GET A MOTRAIT DONE OR OFFER YOUR ARTISTIC SERVICES HERE: http://www.galleryofmo.co.uk/

So back to it - There were a lot of VERY talented artists working peddle to the metal, but still (and quite rightly!) the queues were mahoosive.  So armed with pocket sketchbooks me and Lauren decided to entertain the waiting punters with speedy be-tached mug shots.  As you can see I also entertained them by looking like Bez with a sketchbook.

See what I mean...

I have a World's End Moment 

The Gallery of Mo crew did an ace job of running it all in the face of big crowds and deafening metal (thanks to house band Obey).

They also gave us beer and a T Shirt...

 

Lauren getting deep with her purpose...

Some satisfied (or at least not angry!) customers posing with me squiggles.

I have slight unfinished business, in that I didn't get to do any 'big' pics.  Bring on November 30th then - Bristol's Movember Gala night!

Wild Place...

Picked this up today at the zoo so am having fun colouring...

...you will notice a slght Smurfette motif, but actually I had more of a 'Boy from Mars' (mildly disturbing series included on kids educational program 'Words and Pictures' in early 80s) theme in mind.

It also really reminded me I should tell you about the stuff I did for Wild Place Project, which is Bristol Zoo's new (only opened in July) conservation park..it's not every day you get asked to design mascots for a major tourist attraction!  You can see my handywork all over their website and leaflet (and colouring sheets), but more importantly...

...as you enter...
 ...walk around...

and leave the park...

All continues the theme of working a bit bigger...more on that soon!

Movember is nearly upon us...

..well sort of... this year has been ranting by!  Got my email invite to join in the Gallery of Mo fun this year, and will definitely be getting involved (they mentioned live events too which is intriguing...).  You should too!
Here's a link to their site explaining how it works, although here're a few examples of my stuff from last year making it fairly self explanitory!!

As you can see last year I liked to keep it old school - but you know, I'm a child of the wind (almost certain my kids would make an inappropriate joke at this juncture) so who knows what I'll do this year...

Your miserable and most unworthy scribe goes to Durham!

What a day I had yesterday!!  I was very honoured to be asked up to the Palace Green Library in Durham to do a workshop as part of their Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition (which is amazing by the way, as is its region wide programme of events - well worth checking out!).

When I arrived in Durham it was clear that this exhibition is a very big deal - there are signs and banners for it everywhere, and the town, which I'm getting to know and love more with each visit, has a really nice buzz about it.

Anyway, here's what I did - a live drawn Lindisfarne Gospels timeline, taking you through the background of why it was made, who made it and how, and the ripping yarn of how it came to settle in Durham for hundreds of years...

Now, I say 'here's what I did'...but it should read 'here's what we did'.  The whole point of it was that large parts of it would be filled in by kids, parents, grandparents (and exhibition staff!) who popped in, and they really didn't let me down!

I also brought quill pens, reed pens and silverpoint for kids to try out, but as you can imagine didn't have much time for photogramaphising, so you'll have to imagine the chaos that entailed.


Oooh and another thing - I got a brief ten minutes to look around the exhibition itself, and I'll say again, it is absolutely fantastic.  I got the history bug doing the 'Discover The Lindisfarne Gospels' book, and I learnt so much more in just a few minutes wandering round.  I saw the big book itself which was amazing, but my fave bit was seeing St Cuthbert's pocket bible, which was taken from his coffin when he was exhumed and (I think!) is the oldest book in England (Europe? The world? Calling all experts!!)  to have survived with it's original leather binding intact....kinda lovely.  Click here for some more 'must see's .  A top exhibition, staffed by people who love the subject, which has some kind of intrigue at most turns...I thoroughly recommend it.

A big thank you is in order to everyone there for an absolutely fantastic day.

Wot I did this Spring...

Ohmygoshkit's July and I haven't blogged anything for a ages (as some of my mates have politely pointed out!).  So where have I been?  Well I've been working innit, and over the next few days I'll fill you in on what I've been doing.

First up, today is the launch of the very exciting Lindisfarne Gospels Durham exhibition, whereby for 3 months this beautiful Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscript returns (on loan from the lovely folks at the British Library) to its one time home in Durham.  It isn't understating things to say that this is one of the most beautiful and important books in this country's history, so I was very honoured when I was asked by Durham University to co-write and illustrate a kids book about it.

The book arrived on my doormat recently, and I have endeavoured to take the prerequisite idyllic bloggy photos, but it has been made difficult by major building work in my house and high winds in my garden. Apologies in advance!!

The book tells the story of how and why the book was made, and the 200 yr odyssey it went on before settling in Durham.  Your guides for the book are these two...based on illustrations that can be found in the manuscript itself.  I thoroughly enjoyed working on it, largely as I found the subject fascinating, but also because of the endless enthusiasm and support of Dr Sarah Price, who co-wrote the book with me (and was really the brains behind the operation!).

A typical scene in my 'studio'

Heh hem ...and another one...

I am very proud of the book, but it's always hard to be objective about your own work.  It does however seem to have passed the child test!

 I'll be going up to Durham at some point in August to do some live drawing (not to be confused with life drawing!) and workshops - I can't wait!  I thoroughly recommend a trip to Durham, as this exhibition will be fascinating...but also because I love the place.