14th WW Sketchcrawl - Ely

Saturday the 19th marked the date for the 14th worldwide sketchcrawl.
Diane and I decided to take part and chose Ely, Cambridgeshire as our location, we were met by Emma-Jane on our arrival.

After a browse in Tindalls at the delicious art materials where I purchased a bottle of black ink, our first stop was a chair opposite Starbucks.

We then moved onto the green outside the cathedral where The Chantry caught my eye.

From the same spot on the grass I turned to sketch the entrance to the cathedral while E-J finished her sketch of the yummy chocolate cake I had purchased in the market.

It was a most enjoyable day spent in great company, I'm so pleased Emma-Jane managed to come along. As always, I wish I had sketched more but the afternoon wind, good conversation and hot coffee shared our day.

I hope to go back to Ely with my sketchbooks in the not too distant future, such a fabulous town scattered with fantastic architecture and then of course there is the cathedral itself, I visited last year, such brilliant workmanship surely deserves another entry in my sketchbooks!

13th WW Sketchcrawl - Chatteris Museum

Saturday the 17th marked the date for the 13th Worldwide Sketchcrawl when Artists from all over the world meet up and sketch for the day.

I met up with some members of the Fenland Visual Arts Collective in Chatteris where, thanks to Jenny Furlong, we spent the day sketching in Chatteris Museum. We were also joined by Emma-Jane Rosenberg (E-J from Wet Canvas) Emma-Jane is a warm, friendly woman who fitted right in from the start, we all had a wonderful day together.

Rob Morris kindly supplied hot drinks at his home and a place to lunch (Thankyou Rob!). We stopped by The Old Bakery Cafe on the way there to purchase some delicious cakes.

I decided to use a Hahnemuhle Travel Booklet 9x14cm Portrait. I purchased this from the SAA where, as a member, I paid a mere £1.75 and to my surprise discovered it was a duo pack...That's under 90p each! Each booklet contains 20 pages of unlined 140gsm sketch paper and there is a pocket at the rear of the booklet. The cover is soft and natural in appearance allowing you to write/sketch on it. I thought it would be fun to title the cover and then try to fill half the booklet for this sketchcrawl then turn the booklet over and do the same for the 14th Worldwide sketchcrawl. This meant I had 20, 3.5x 5.5" pages to fill...Quite the challenge but one I am happy to say I achieved!

The booklet performed well with the various media I used throughout the day: Derwent watercolour pencils, Derwent drawing pencils, Lyra portrait coloured pencils, W&N watercolour, Verithin coloured pencils, sepia pitt pen and staedtler pigment liner....although I must stress minimal amounts of water were used, modestly applied with a brush pen.

Here are the results, my day from beginning to end, in sketch:

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Some of the worldwide results can be viewed HERE