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

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...

Movember field report

A quick field sketch of a guy who walked past me in the bar earlier - rocking a quality mo, but he didn't seem to have quite settled into it yet and was looking slightly defensive.  Not that I am one to talk - I alas am prevented from growing a full on mo by a rare genetic condition that causes my moustache to grow ginger whilst the rest of my hair is dull brown...makes me look like an 80 a day roll-up smoker, and stops my other half from talking to me.

Idling...

Yesterday I decided to take a day off.
Now cos I can't totally leave work alone, I went first thing and put the finishing touches to a 'Pin the Tail on The Discosaur' ready for use in the zoo's Dino Party Room this weekend..it's proper daft (more on this when I have some snaps), and it didn't really feel like work.

The rest of my day revolved around buying and trying out watercolour pencils (finished work good/ location sketching bad) whilst drinking coffee, then falling asleep under a tree, then doing some walking and sketching

Due to recent storms there are still a lot of branches lying about.  By far the most interesting at a glance  is a huge branch from a willow tree, which twists and curls like smoke - I've been meaning to draw it for ages.  Not sure this is a spectator sport, but what the hey - I thoroughly enjoyed myself doing these!

My local park has some lovely trees in it, so I plan to do some more sketching there, although the next chance I get I may have to do some work overcoming my greatest artistic bete noire - the horse.

Life drawing at The Tobacco Factory

As any fool knows, if you are to draw cartoon lions with any degree of competence, it is essential that you first develop a decent understanding of the human form..namely by going to lifedrawing sessions.

Now for the record I had got a bit bored of lifedrawing.  Poses seemed to be the same wherever I went (Hand on hip...check.  Hands on head...check.  Sat on floor with head on knee....and so on) and they didn't seem to relate to things people actually do (eg interact with the world around them).  So I was a tad sceptical when I first went to the Tobacco Factory to do their class...but hats off - it's ace!!

Michelle Cioccoloni who organises it actually seems to think about what she gets the models to do and why - she brings in ref pictures to give people inspiration;  the models often lean on things, pull ropes etc to show muscle tension and balance, and wear clothes or are draped in fabric so you can see how material hangs/folds.

I've included a couple of pictures from Monday's session...I have chosen the ones least likely to make your granny blush!

In a devil of a pickle (or maybe a jam..)

This weekend was ace on a number of fronts. Friday night me, my lovely other half Mel and our good friend Lou Archell put up a bunch of our stuff for exhibition at The Bed Workshop in Bedminster as part of the SouthBank Arts Trail  (it's a bit of a link frenzy this isn't it...sorry, it's going to get worse).
I'd like to particularly thank Mel, as she got me to do this when there was a large cloud of 'not sure I can be bothered' looming on the horizon.  In the end I put up pretty much every passable King Lear sketch I had and was well chuffed with the results.

Now I don't have many pictures of the exhibition without these guys in front, but that's okay as they were the main reason the weekend was ace.

At 3 oclock on Sunday, slightly befuddled from attending a wedding the previous day (another good weekend factor!) I and about a hundred other people crammed into the shop to see 'The Blatant Creation of Art' featuring The Bristol Ukulele Club doing 'Four Posters and a Pickle'.

Now this was a rock opera about the devil's efforts to scupper the burgeoning romance between a jam maker and a pickle maker (and also nipping the pickle makers nascent carpentry career in the bud by means of hellfire).

Why?  Well it's loosely linked to the fact that the Bed Workshop used to be a pickle factory..and who knows there may be some other historical basis for it...but for now I don't care!

Hands down the best thing I've seen in ages... funny, well acted, funny, well sung/played, completely unexpected and funny....I'm pretty sure it was all done for the love too.  And for one who's trying to get a handle on rhyming and storytelling, it was properly inspirational....

...my kids have been giving it 'P to the I to the C to the K to the L-E-S to the J-A-M' ever since.

There was someone videoing the whole thing so I'm hoping they'll put it up on their blog or somewhere.  Here's the link just in case.. http://blatantbs3.blogspot.co.uk/

I bloody love Bristol sometimes.

Opening Night

On Friday night I went to the opening night of King Lear at the Tobacco Factory Theatre which was ace.  It was great seeing all my favourite bits from rehearsals played out in front of a packed house, and also seeing some of the subtle nuances I may have missed whilst trying to get people's noses right...

I also got a copy of the program pressed into my mits, which was great because it was the first time I'd seen the artwork I did for the centrespread, well, in the centrespread.  Artwork always looks better when it's shiny!  Luckily I think most of the cast like it (leastways no-one has seemed mortally offended by any bad likenesses.

And that dear friends is it for my Lear mission, at least with regards to sketching it, which is a little sad, as it's probably been one of the happiest drawing experiences I've ever had...and I'd like to say a massive thankyou to all the cast and crew for being so nice to me and letting me sit in in the first place.

Where next?  Well, I hope to sketch some of the rehearsals for their next production, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which start in a couple of weeks, although I've got a fair few cartoon animals to draw over the coming months.  I also hope to figure out a decent way to exhibit some of my King Lear work..whether that'll just be the sketches or some extra work inspired by them I'm not sure...I'll keep you posted!  One thing is for sure though is that I am now well and truly hooked on this kind of sketching, so I'll be lloking to do more one way or another..

Dress rehearsals!

Saw the cast in their costumes for the first time on Monday.  They looked amazing, but it did make me chuckle to start off with - having seen everyone rehearsing in the civvies for most of the month it felt a little like seeing all your workmates in fancy dress (hold that image if you work in an office).

The last couple of days have been 'tech rehearsals', so there's been (mercifully for me) a bit of hanging round whilst lights, sound, angle of approach for a quick dispatching, etc are got right.  But there's still a lot of movement on stage, so I just get down what I can before they move on.   I would also like to say in my defence that it was dark where I was sat...

This one below I'm particularly pleased with - I've been trying and failing to draw Jack Whitam (Edmund) for ages, and this is the only time I think I've come even close.  There are a few other members of cast and crew who, through no fault of theirs, I can't draw for toffee.  You may know who you are, in which case sorry, and I will try to remedy the situation asap!

Today's scenes were all of the 'blimey it's all going off' variety.  Whilst they've stopped a long way short of having to issue a 'first two rows will get wet' warning, and it's all tastefully done,  I'd recommend perhaps just having a light salad as your meal before the play.  Needless to say it makes for cracking  theatre, but poor old Gloucester!

Behind the scenes

Alas my friends, the end is near, and so I face etc etc etc.  Opening night is but a couple of nights away, and now that we're into final dress rehearsals I need to leave everyone to it (nothing like the sound of someone dropping their pencil case to put you off your eye gouging scene).  There is no downside to this though - i've loved every second of it, and it's been important to me to milk every second of my remaining time here for all it's worth.

Subsequently I have drawn LIKE A FIEND.  All the pictures you see today and on tomorrow's post were drawn today and yesterday (and you can double what you see if you factor in the really crap ones I've left out!)

Anyway, today's pictures are of the lovely ladies of the costume dept (loosely termed 'department' as I think members of stage management were mucking in too).  

Step out of the auditorium and you're straight into the bar area, which for the last couple of days has been a hive of activity whilst everyone adjusts costumes, sorts hairstyles and occasionally gets deafened by the sound of trumpets and hunting hounds*.

These pictures are slightly misleading as there tended to be at least 3 people round the table at anyone time.

I should mention too that the costumes look chuffing amazing

When it's not full of costumes and people working hard on them (and even when it is) this is the area where the cast hang out when having breaks/waiting to be called..I'm including this picture cos I'm chuffed with it!

* if you play the sound effects super loud in the bar it sounds like distant clamour to the audience in the theatre!