With April showers providing the unexpected, a group of ten walkers assembled at the top of the High Street near St Peter’s Church. With hoods up we sheltered to begin with under tow huge yew trees whilst Sara introduced Canopy, her role and warmed us up with a quick mark making task.
A path lined with pollarded lime trees provided the starting point for sketching the wonderful linear patterns to be found on the tree trunk bark. Next, with a good view of the Severn, an introduction to F W Harvey and Ivor Gurney’s lives and two poems were read out about the River Severn and Newnham.
Later in the walk, with drier weather conditions we were introduced to the Wellingtonia fir tree in the
centre of the large green, where the Castle used to be situated. Sara demonstrated how to use sticks with paint and feathers with ink to further experimentation of mark making. To add to the fun we could spray our sketchbook pages with water to ‘see what happened’.
We imagined the Victorians parading across the bridge and events in the Civil War noticing where earth had been moved to raise the lookout height.
Although participants had references to Henry Moore’s sheep sketches in their sketchbooks, ready
prepared, the local sheep were not very co-operative! Sara had viewed them repeatedly in a nearby
field only to find they had moved to a field further away. Eventually when the group took a detour to
find them the sheep all decided to move on again to another field where access was even more difficult. However, under not the best circumstances some surprisingly strong sketches of sheep emerged.
More co-operative was British Rail with not one but two trains using the railway line when we were on the bridge noticing how the train lines disappeared into the dark tunnel. With opportunities to explore a variety of crayons and consider our responses to places in words it was soon time for a hot drink and cake at Severnside Press with a glorious exhibition by local farOpen artists
to view.
Flora & Fauna Severn Sisters Art Exhibition at The Severnside Press B&B
Canopy Creative Network 