St Michael's C of E Primary, Weeton, Lancs

This week, I had a very short notice request (through an acquaintence) for a memento to be given as a leaving gift to a favourite teacher retiring after years of service to a village school close to where we live here on The Fylde in Lancashire.  With a couple of clear days available at the beginning of the week, the school was visited and photographed, the drawing done, matted and framed – all within about 36 hours!  The drawing is about 7.75 x 4.75 inches and mounted in a 12 x 9 inch oak frame.  It is graphite pencil on Arches Aquarelle hot pressed 140 lb paper.  Being right on a through road, with no pathway on the opposite side of the road, it was quite difficult to get a really good view of the school.  However, in the end, I decided to focus on showing a welcoming path to the front door.   I was pleased with the result (it’s a while since I’ve done pure graphite on paper!) and I’ve since had a text to say that the recipient was delighted!!

Link to Grantham’s Preston shop website here:  www.artdiscount.co.uk/preston/

Tuesdays and Thursdays  10.00 am – 4.00pm, Saturday 10.00 am – 12.30 pm

In the exhibition are three of my coloured pencil on panel drawings – “Refected 1, 2 and 3″, “Time and Tide” ( my four panel plein air painting of the tide coming in at Grange-over-Sands that was Highly Commended in the LSAAS Spring Show) and two life studies.

(Photos taken with my ‘phone during a recent visit – during a lull in visitors!)

Here’s what my little corner looked like on Saturday – when we had the best weather.  I rearranged things a bit for the Sunday and made it look a bit less cluttered.  I was on a fairly narrow corridor opposite a lovely couple who made novelty items out of re-cycled silver spoons!  They kept up a fairly constant cry of “all made from re-cycled cutlery” in order to arrest passers by.  I resisted the temptation to counter with “these painting are all done with fresh paint!”.  Still – it was a pleasant weekend even though I can’t yet retire on the proceeds!!

"Step right up! Get 'em while they're fresh!!"

Not just a regular crayon!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I did hour-long demonstration sessions in the museum.  On Thursday, I lead a full-day workshop with a group of artists who have booked in for the whole day.  The subject of this session was “Big and Bold, Wet and Dry” and focussed on ways of using Derwent Aquatone.  In addition to some drawing exercises and new techniques, for the first time I also gave the participants a chance to work on the larger, prepared wooden panels that I use for much of my own work.  Thanks very much to Elinor, Angela, Rebecca, Susan, Wendy, Fay, Suzy and Mike – who seemed to have a good time and were very tolerant of my “evangelising” around the use of coloured pencils as a fine art medium.

Informal "show and tell" at the end of the workshop.

While I was at the Museum, I was also able to take a good look at the UKCPS “World of Coloured Pencil Exhibition” sponsored by Derwent and hosted by The Pencil Museum.  With a small exhibition space for only 24 pictures, entry was by ballot and proves to be a really excellent display of the variety of work that is possible with coloured pencils.  For further details and an on-line look at the entries – go to www.ukcps.co.uk

I shall be back at The Pencil Museum with more demonstrations and a workshop day in October (5th, 6th & 7th) with the subject “Herdwick Sheep and Lakeland Beasts in Aquatone”.

For further details go to

A bit more progress!

Another afternoon’s work on “The Bridge House” – there’s a lot of stone in this one!