Sketching and Fish in Macclesfield

Guest post by Rosemary Bradshaw, Macclesfield, Cheshire, United Kingdom

We call ourselves Maccsketchers—a group just starting out, brought together by the love of sketching in the tradition of Urban Sketchers. We aim to show the charm of this ancient silk mill town in North West England. We meet every Tuesday at 10:00 AM at an art cafe called Jack Sevens in the centre of town. After coffee, we set off to draw for a couple of hours, meeting back at the cafe for a “show and tell”.

Together with another keen, local sketch artist, Sally Henman, we spent a morning in November at Cheshire Fish, a shop with an award-winning reputation. The fish–fresh and smoked–comes daily from Britain and further afield. The staff was very friendly, interested and tolerant of us while they were hard at work. I drew Blake preparing fish.

I then turned my attention to the smoked fish display. The one on the right is a Manx Kipper which is cured on the Isle of Man. It is currently in my freezer, waiting for a special breakfast—kipper traditionally served with scrambled eggs and brown bread!

Sally drew the colourful and fascinating fresh fish. On the right, the long Wincle Trout comes from a local village by the same name, where people go to fish for their dinner from a trout river farm. In the middle: a John Dory. On the left: a Gurnard.

Aaron worked on a large white fish while I drew. We had a wonderful morning there and the staff really appreciated what we did.

We hope that Maccsketchers will gradually expand but are happy for it to be not too organised! We have lots to draw: Macclesfield is a picturesque, Cheshire town of cobbled streets, landmark churches, varied shops and an imposing Georgian town hall. Since I like to draw people, I’m interested in sketching at a music cafe near my house. When weather is nice, we sketch outdoors. Of course people stop from time to time to chat. We hope to produce a calendar.

Rosemary Bradshaw is an artist, printmaker and retired art tutor who moved to Macclesfield in July 2014 from St. Albans, UK where she drew regularly with Cafe Sketchers in London. Her work can be seen HERE.

Sally Henman is a painter from Macclesfield.

Curated and edited by Marcia Milner-Brage