Life Drawing Classes in Cumbria

I was down in Kendal last week for a meeting about the Lakes International Comics Festival, which meant I didn’t get to any life drawing classes. The festival sounds really exciting, with over sixty top artists turning up from all over the world. One of them will be Glynn Dillon, who drew the incredible ‘Nao of Brown’. Normally, I’d be prepared to hate any comic that was about things Japanese. Japan is my thing, and I get very jealous of others writing about it. I realise that’s not wholly rational, but jealousy never is. However, I’ll forgive Glynn for encroaching on my territory as the book is fantastic.

Another artist I’m very excited about meeting is Jose Munoz, the Argentinian artist behind Alec Sinner and Joe’s Bar. I love the way he leaks black ink all over the page. It’s almost as if the ink just flows into shadows and lines by itself.

On top of that, Costa prize winning Bryan and Mary Talbot will be along and Sean Phillips too! It’s going to be Geek Nirvana in Kendal.

On the life drawing front, there may be a new class starting at Florence Mine, which is an amazing venue. And maybe another artist group around the Penrith area. All depends on artist numbers, of course, but I think we should have enough.

There’s another course running in Keswick towards the end of April. I’m reliably informed there are a few places left, but they’ll go quickly, so contact Celia at the about number.
There are rumours of other classes starting in other parts of Cumbria, but I’ll wait until they’re finalised.

I had another play with the tablet at Papcastle last week, as I’ve figured out the layers…sort of. Layers are something a few people have mentioned finding difficult to comprehend, and I don’t know how they work or anything, but I tend to think of them as transparent sheets you put on the picture and then colour in. That’s as technical as I get really. Sketchbook allows three layers at mid resolution, and up to eight at low res. I wanted to use a medium resolution because I like to get into the details of the eyes and face, but maybe a lower resolution would have allowed me to play with colour more.
For this picture, I ended up having to merge layers down to get more colours in, using fairly transparent layers on top to add in greens and red to the skin tones, merging them down and then creating another layer. If I’d stuck to low res, I’d have had more layers to play with.
Sketchbook could also really do with a blend tool in the Android version. You can get around this by playing with the eraser set at different levels of opacity, but it’s pretty slow.
On the whole, I’m reasonably happy with the picture, and the new stylus, with some sore of fabric tip instead of the squashy sticky rubber tips most of them have, is a definite improvement. But it’s still work in progress.

Happy New Year/ 明けましておめでとう！
Papcastle classes started last week, as did Braithwaite and Helen Walsh’s classes. The Braithwaite group are holding an exhibit in Keswick this year too, details to follow….