Manchester 2016 : Day 3

Sorry for the very long silence. I meant to post everyday through the 4 day Urban Sketcher’s Symposium in Manchester, but by day 3, I gave up: the buzz, teaching, running around and sketching and attending activities when I was not teaching meantI never had the time to blog my day. So here is a very late report on Day 3.

The day started with another quick sketch session before teaching. This time it was boats on the canal and then a very quick view of the skyline. When I sketched the boats the sun broke out for a wee bit, and I hoped for a day with no rain during my workshop… but that didn’t last.

Here are photographs from another wet day with 16 brave sketchers sketching in the rain and putting up with being squeezed under little ledges for sharing and teaching sessions. I guess if you must do stuff that’s hard to do, you might as well do it in a workshop!

I have to say I kinda like when the weather paints a part of your sketch. Here is my demo sketch from that day, of a building with a lovely name: The Grosvenor Picture Palace. And if you look at the closeup, you can see that the rain painted in quite a bit of the texture for me. I liked this piece enough to donate it to the auction of original sketches on the last day of the Symposium and was so thrilled it went home with a sketcher friend.

The highlight of the day for me was the fantastic and very inspiring show by Lynne Chapman. In Unfolding Stories, created over a residency at the Morgan Center, Lynne says so much: Just the scale of what she achieved in a year is amazing. Even more amazing was walking up close to her pieces, looking at, and reading details of these accordion panels. ( no edits, no sketches thrown away, no erasing in this documentation, just a long, long string of sketches that tell wonderful stories of the everyday: amazing, isn’t it?) Lynne manages to bring alive whatever she documents. She give us a sense of the space she works in, and we feel like we know a little about every person she records. She explains really complex stuff in ways that make it simple to understand and touches on big concepts, little details, global truths and very personal stories. All in a voice and with a sense of humor that is truly and uniquely her own. I could go on and on about this show, but instead here are some photos from that day.

Did you miss Day 1 and Day 2? Day 4, the final day,  coming up next.