In the first workshop of the series, Stockport born artist and architect Simone Ridyard hosted an urban sketching session at Hat Works Museum.
The workshop, aimed at beginner sketchers, saw Simone share her tips and tricks for urban sketching in real time, highlighting important tools in her kit and share some of her own urban sketches from Stockport and beyond.
After the introductions to sketching, the group took their preferred drawing tools and found a suitably inspiring landscape to draw from. Perched above the town with its large windows, Hat Works provided an excellent vantage point for those who wanted to stay indoors, while some of the group took their sketchbooks out onto Wellington Road to draw from within the bus stops and doorways of the street.
Many of the workshop participants admitted they hadn’t done any sketching since school and the session was an opportunity to flex their creative muscles with guidance and advice from Simone herself. The session was also a chance to capture Stockport’s changing landscape and to look at a familiar environment through a new lens, marking the juxtaposition of old and new architecture, and commemorating Stockport’s time as Town of Culture.
Reflections by artist, curator and researcher Beth Turner-Pemburton / All photography © ElleBrotherhood
