Newbury Spring Festival 2017: Leo Popplewell, Cellist, lunchtime recital at the Corn Exchange

Last year, I participated in a collaboration between the Newbury Spring Festival and the local Open Studios in which artists were invited to sketch at performances and rehearsals. The results of last year's collaboration (which involved six artists in total) are on display at the Newbury Corn Exchange until 24 May.

I really enjoyed the sketching, and I found working from those sketches to produce finished artworks a very satisfying process. So I was delighted when I discovered that I would be able to do it again this year. I was only able to fit one sketching date in my schedule, and that date was today's lunchtime recital - a performance by the young cellist Leo Popplewell.

There were, by coincidence, a lot of cellos last year. I have come to like cellos; they have beautiful curves and make a wonderful array of very lovely sounds. Young Mr. Poplewell certainly teases out a fabulous noise from his instrument. He was accompanied by Mikey Pandya on piano for the first part of the show (when they performed Sibelius - Malinconia Op.20 and Fauré - Sonata No.2 in G Op.117), but played alone on stage for the second part (Britten - Cello Suite No.1 Op.72).

Newbury, Berkshire (skyline)

Urban panoramas are a bit tricky. You've got to get all the roofs to line up and be the right size, and sometimes you run out of paper on the right hand side.. (especially if you are right handed).

But Newbury has a wonderful skyline. Some fascinating roofs: ancient, modern and inbetween.

I was standing on the top floor of a multistorey car park, awaiting my family's return from an extra bit of shopping, so I knew I didn't have long. Having run out of paper before including the church, it was a relief to find that I had time to do a separate drawing, and a bonus to be able to add the pen clarifications below the first drawing, which was made in 6B graphite stick.

Newbury Racecourse

...Station. Drawn while waiting for the steam train. Complete with soon-to-be-demolished, tallest-building-in-Newbury, derelict-and-dangerous, interesting-industrial-relict Sterling Cables.

The Mayflower at Newbury Racecourse

Newbury Racecourse has a railway station that is often used by mainline steam trains to take on water (it's not a busy station, and it has a convenient siding). Rose and I managed to be there while the Cathedrals Express, pulled by the Mayflower, was taking on water en route to Exeter this morning. This is my sketch from the platform on the other line.

It's a bit of a mish-mash, my sketch - there's Rotring ArtPen Indian ink, indigo calligraphy ink delivered via the Sailor pen, and Derwent Drawing pencils.