Workshops and Life Drawing

At the back end of last week I had a splurge of arty activity, which meant I had to spend Sunday catching up with mundane tasks that I had happily shoved to one side.

On Friday, I went along to the pop up gallery in Shipley Underground Market that has been set up by Hive. I took part in a workshop around hexagons run by a good friend, Gill Smith (of Ceramicals blog). As it was half term, Hive had been running a number of different workshops open to all, but mainly aimed at local children. I made a hexagon, but then I got my small sketchbook out as the opportunity to sketch was too good to miss. Everyone was so absorbed in their creations.

At the Pop Up Gallery

Hive is an organisation trying to make as many connections between creativity and the community as possible. Their base in Shipley has a number of workshops covering different media like ceramics, woodwork and textiles. Here they run a number of creative courses, and provide a space for people to use the facilities on a drop in basis.

Every other Saturday there is a life drawing session called The Saturday People in Leeds at the Swarthmore Centre. I've been attending it for a number of years (I used to model for them as well), although recently other life stuff has got in the way. I've been making the effort to get myself back into the habit, and attended this last session for the afternoon rather than the whole day.

Portrait of Susan

The model for this session was art and fitness educator, Susan Ross (another very good friend). The afternoon was set up for one hour long drawing, where I tackled a challenging foreshortened view, followed by some shorter poses. I've been working on portraits recently, so I decided to use a thirty minute poses to try a portrait.