Workshop at the Workhouse

A short while ago, Lesley Sharman held a successful coloured pencil workshop at the Ripon Workhouse Museum. This was her first try at teaching and it obviously worked as she has been asked to do it again and full details of future events can be seen on the website.

Here's Lesley's report of the event in October.

Eight people attended (the maximum number that I’d decided on), who came from far and wide. One lady travelled over 70 miles to attend after spotting the event on the Workshops page of the UKCPS website, another came from 60 miles away, and two were from about 20 miles away. They were all keen to try out something different from the usual watercolour painting classes and some specifically wanted instruction in using coloured pencils.

As everybody was new to CP I started with the basics, explaining about equipment and techniques and let them experiment with different types of pencils and papers. The afternoon was taken up with following step-by-step instructions for three different-coloured bell peppers which I had prepared.

Derwent very kindly sponsored the event, and I also explained about the Society and handed out flyers, so hopefully we may soon have some new members from up North.

To my relief, the day was a great success and everybody went home happy and proud of what they managed to achieve.

I had very positive feedback and I recently repeated the workshop. The lady from 60 miles away returned with five other people from her local art group, and they have asked for more. I now have a waiting list of people wanting to learn about coloured pencil, so I think this might well be the start of my running regular workshops in Yorkshire, building on the first one to cover different subjects and techniques. Watch this space!