SketchCrawl 4: Drawing, Drawing, Drawing...

Here are some more photos and sketches from our recent SketchCrawl in Sheffield city centre.

This first couple are at our lunch stop in Zooby's cafe in the Winter Gardens. We were all so keen, we did just as much drawing as eating!


These rest of the photos were all taken at the Crucible Corner bar, at the end of the afternoon, where we passed round the sketchbooks and looked at everyone's drawings from the day.



You can see the itinerary if the venues we visited here, or read all about how it went here.


If you want to go on a mailing list, let me know, then I can tell you when we are planning the next one. Everyone is welcome: any age, any level of ability.


These are just some of the sketches done on the day:

Sian Hughes:




Julie Whitham:

Jo Mincher:



Bryn Hughes:


Dave Green:




Abi Goodman:


Sally Jane Thompson:




Lynne Chapman:

The bulk of my sketches are on the main blog about the day.

Our First SketchJam!

SketchJams are a spin-off from the SketchCrawls, and a new idea we tried out recently.

On Jan 13th, a small group of us got together to experiment with drawing musicians in the pub. It was a very small room, so we were really eyeballing them!

There were as many of us sketchers as there were musicians! Luckily, they were pretty cool about the idea of being drawn and were very interested to see out work afterwards.

The evening proved to be great fun, so we'll be doing it again soon.

Click here to read about the event and see some of the sketches, or click here: SketchJam to see my sketchbooks from our other music-drawing events.

Sketchcrawl no 3: Cafe's & Cathedrals

Here are a few of the drawings that folks from in and around Sheffield did in their sketchbooks on Dec 4th's sketchcrawl. It's really interesting to see how various different people have tackled the same subjects.

Sian Hughes:

Abi Goodman:

Bryn Hughes:

Thomas Forde:




Jane Horton:

If you want to find out what it's all about, or read about other Sheffield sketchcrawls, there's plenty on my main blog here. Or you can visit the sketchcrawl home site created by the sketchcrawl founder Enrico Casarosa, to check out sketchcrawls in your home town.

SCBWI Conference - a Journey in Pictures

I recently did a long train journey, down to Winchester, to spend the weekend at the SCBWI conference. Here's what I drew.

First leg - 1hr on the 15.23 from Sheffield to Birmingham:

Changing at Birmingham onto the 17.03 (except it's running 25 minutes late):


On the way back it's a mad dash and I'm just in time to catch the 17.50 back to Birmingham:

Two bits of bad news drop on me half way home. Firstly I find my hotel room key in my handbag (oops); secondly my connecting train at Birmingham is 20 minutes late, then 30, then 40... and finally arrives, 50 minutes late, so it's nearly 9pm before I get back underway (groan):

Whenever a train is late, twice the amount of passengers appear by magic from somewhere! It's so full I can't get near my reserved seat:

I get home just in time for bed at 10.45pm - what a marathon!