Looking back to a sketching weekend in Lille

Sketches from a trip to Lille, France, earlier this year. I went to the annual French Urban Sketchers meet up with a group of UK sketchers. So easy to travel there by Eurostar from London and a great place to draw!

 

Illustrated envelopes

Here are photographs of some of the illustrated envelopes that I have been working on recently. I’m using them to send out samples of my work to potential clients who might be interested in commissioning me. I took inspiration from photos from trips to France, Portugal and Germany. It was lovely to go back and relive a few memories! The envelopes were inexpensive ones, C5 size, but took the pen line and watercolour wash quite well I thought. I tried to stick to drawing on the left-hand side, using only about a third of the space so that there was plenty of room for the address.

I first tried this idea last year as a way of letting existing clients know about my new website that I had just launched. That time I used good quality ones, DL size, from Paperchase. These envelopes had a sort of linen texture and also took the line and wash well. 

It’s something that takes a little time to do but is very enjoyable to do and hopefully is a nice surprise for the recipient!

Visiting the travel sketchbook festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France

It was lovely to visit the travel sketchbook event, ‘Rendez-vous du carnet de voyage’ earlier this month. I first visited the festival, which is held in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand, last year and vowed to return, this time with more spending money! Over 90 artists, including many from the Urban Sketchers community, come together to show drawings from their travels all over the world. Quite a few artists who I follow on Instagram had stands at the festival and I left with a great haul of books, all signed and some with special drawings too. 

The festival is held at the Polydome near the city's rugby ground.

My haul of books!

Here are links to the artists I bought books from:

Hugo Barros Costa - @yolahugo on Instagram

Lapin - http://www.lesillustrationsdelapin.com/

Manu Ripoll - @manuripoll89 on instagram

Juliette Plisson - @juliette.plisson on Instagram

Marielle Durand - @idrawamerica on Instagram

Olivier Kugler - http://www.olivierkugler.com/

Hugo Barros Costa on his stand 

Lapin drew a portrait for me!

Manu Ripoll signing my copy of his book of drawings

Beautiful fold-out print by Juliette Plisson

Lovely display from Francois Wagner

Below are my own sketchbook pages from the trip.

The watercolour illustration at the top of the blog post is of the 'Hotel le Lion' where I stayed on my trip. I had a room on the top floor with a great view across the central square, which you can see in some of the sketches. I booked through Expedia and thought it was good value and would recommend it to anyone visiting the city!

This is the link to their website - http://www.hotel-le-lion-clermont.fr/en/

This is the link to the 'Rendez-vous du carnet de voyage' website - https://www.rendezvous-carnetdevoyage.com/en/

Long weekend in Lyon

I recently spent a lovely but very hot weekend in Lyon. The high temperatures meant lots of time was spent trying to find places with air conditioning, leading to more drawings of cold drinks than I’d normally make!

 

As well as the Musée des Beaux Arts in the centre of the city, I also visited the very impressive ‘Musée des Confluences’ which had a wide range of different permanent and temporary exhibitions.

My favourite was an exhibition of work by graphic artist Hugo Pratt, concentrating on stories about his character Corto Maltese.  The exhibition rooms were dark, with theatrical lighting used to highlight images and collected African items. The shadows cast were particularly effective. A soundtrack of jungle noises and drum beats added to the atmosphere. Individual comic frames were blown up, printed on sheer fabric and stretched over frames. In one circular area, projected images were overlaid on one another, giving the impression of animation, all enhanced with a simple colour scheme. Unfortunately, my French isn’t good enough to know whether the stories are good or not, but they certainly looked dramatic on this scale.

There were lots of photo opportunities in the city, particularly in old town area.

 Note to self: Next time you travel make sure that you book an air(conditioned)bnb.