Drawing Day- Manchester

As an illustrator creating work I will have to do location drawings and my own research when I am creating pieces. To get myself used to this process I decided to spent a day drawing in Manchester City Centre. I hoped to improve my reportage drawing skills especially in drawing figures quickly and to gather resource material that would lead into my future work such as the piece I hoped to create for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards.

Manchester Piccadilly Gardens

I spent a few hours sat in Piccadilly Gardens, it was a warm day and so the gardens were full of people.

                             

I gave myself time to do more detailed drawings of the buildings I especially liked the cluster of buildings visible across the gardens at the top of Oldham Street. Although many poeple were stationary for a long time I tried to draw them quickly as I didn't want them to feel uncomfortable. In the future I might inform people around me of what I am doing to get rid of this feeling. After a while I could draw people in a few quick lines, I especially like the man half sat up on the right of the page and think I captured his pose well in just a few lines.

In another part of  the city I did some quicker looser drawings and found that this was good practice but maybe not detailed enough to be as informative as I would like.

The Manchester Museum, Oxford road

I also visited the Manchester Museum which is part of the University of Manchester on Oxford Road, I have visited this Museum in the past and know it has lots of interesting things especially in the natural world section which would be good to draw.

I spent time drawing the elephant skeleton, knowing it is a rare thing to see and because I enjoy drawing skeletons and bones and find it interesting how they fit together. It was half term when I visited so there were many children running around which made it more difficult to draw and limited the time I spent in the museum, I will take these factors into account on future drawing trips.

The Museum setting allows you to draw people whilst they are concentrating on something else and makes them less uncomfortable of you drawing there. I will visit more museums when drawing people in the future.

         
I looked at moths too as they had a large collection of moths and butterflies and I would like to do some designs using these in the strong black and white style I have been practicing that may become tattoo designs.

I had a productive day and will do more research drawing days in the future to get used to it and develop my professional practice.