Other half of Sheffield’s SketchCrawl

We started Sunday’s SketchCrawl at Sheffield Midland Station.  We had a great turn-out, with some people coming from fairly far afield to join us. Everyone was chatting excitedly and raring to go. 

We drank coffee in the cafe in the forecourt for the first hour, sketching people, the station building and the views through the window. I warmed up on Matthew:

Then I did a quickie looking out at this lovely autumnal tree. I tried out the Inktense watercolour pencils Derwent gave us – they’re really zingy and lovely and soft to use, although I’ve never worked with watercolour pencils before, so need to do far more experimentation. 

It was a wonderfully bright, sunny day, but quite crisp. You can just make out Andrea, sitting out in the cold under the tree, drawing the fountains. 

We had a couple more hours to sketch around the station itself. I decided to be brave and do the long view down the line, from the glass-sided footbridge. It was hard to tame: there was so much going on, but having such strong shadows to block in really helped me find a way to make something of the information-overload:

After that, I went outdoors myself, but I walked all the way down to the very end of platform 5, where I could sit in the sun, and painted the one at the top. I discovered that I’d forgotten my polystyrene mat and so had to sit directly on the hard, cold, concrete platform!

We walked up to the Winter Gardens to warm up for lunch, where I thoroughly enjoyed scoffing a mozzerella, basil and tomato panini. Matthew couldn’t resist painting his panini first, but I don’t have that kind of patience when I’m hungry, so I had a bash at the top of the Central Library building, looking out through the glazed front of the Winter Garden. the light was still amazing:

We walked back down to the station and did at sketchbook sharing in the Sheffield Tap pub on platform 1. 

Some fantastic work was passed around. If you want to see some of it, take a look at Sketchcrawl North.