I never liked Art at school and gave the subject up as soon as I could. Later on, if we had to produce a picture of something as part of our work in another subject , I would first of all get very self-righteously angry about the request (you want me to do a drawing? But this isn't Art, it's Geography!), then take the book home and bribe my little sister- who had a natural talent in this area- to do the job for me. This infant prodigy's expertly-realised 'picture of a merino sheep like the ones in New Zealand' is still talked about to this day in the staffrooms of Newcastle's West End. As, I'm sure, are my own pitiful efforts at depicting the glories of the animal kingdom- which amounted, regardless of the intended subject matter, to a mess of squiggles atop a collection of spindly legs, with a head sticking out of the top that may have belonged to a cat, a goat, or maybe that little kid out of 3S with the National Health glasses.
A budding Hockney I was not. So it is fair to say my school Art teacher- not to mention his colleague in the Geography department- would have been somewhat surprised to find me yesterday afternoon peering out of an upstairs window of Manchester Art Gallery with a pencil in one hand and a sketchbook in the other, attempting to pick out the outline of the Town Hall clock, just visible above the rooftops. And they would have been astonished, 20 minutes later, to see me using specially-designed fabric crayons to reproduce my design in a shock of colour onto a white T-shirt, which I would later put on in the house and threaten to wear down the pub.
This is not normally the way I spend my Sundays. But this is no normal Sunday; it is the Manchester launch day of a government-sponsored initiative known as The Big Draw, a follow-up to last year's Big Read, which encouraged us with some success to turn off our tellies and go and find a good book to curl up with. Now the powers-that-be, it seems, have grown tired of seeing us all moping around with our heads stuck inside of Lord of the Rings, and would like us to do something a little more healthy- like getting out into the fresh air for once, and maybe taking a pencil and sketchpad with us.
This week's Independent Magazine (the Indie is a fervent supporter of the Big Draw) is full of star figures from the worlds of design and illustration (Gerald Scarfe, Zandra Rhodes, er, that bloke out of Blur) extolling the life-enhancing, mind-improving virtues of the gentle art of drawing, which is felt to be under threat in this age of multi-channel TV and computer games. The famous pencil-wielders are unanimously adamant that it doesn't matter at all what your subject matter is, as long as you give drawing a go. And neither is perceived lack of ability any excuse. The bloke from Blur gets quite strict with us on this point. 'Of course anyone can draw- I hate it when people say they're no good at it!', is his considered view.
Well, that's us told. And since me and Charlotte have not got to where we are today by going around upsetting former Britpop stars, we consult the listings in the Independent, strap young Frankie up in his pram (it is never too early to introduce your children to the arts, darling!) and make our way to the town centre, where the good people from Persil are sponsoring the 'Hanging Out at Manchester Art Gallery' event. We find the normally quiet venue abuzz with activity; in the ceramic room people of all ages are striding around looking for inspiration (the idea is you make a sketch of something that takes your fancy from the gallery collection then reproduce your drawing on a t-shirt supplied free by the sponsors)- and downstairs there are cheerful attendants directing people with finished drawings into a back room, where there are finished shirts hanging out to dry on a massive washing line (those market-savvy people from Persil again!), and people clutching sketchpads fighting over a scarce supply of special fabric pens.
Clutching my just-finished sketch of the town hall clocktower (I couldn't find anything easy enough in the ceramic room, and figured surely even I can draw a great big clock) I snaffle a couple of pens from a passing seven-year old, and twenty minutes later am the proud owner of my own piece of designer apparel. Although admittedly it is unlikely we will be seeing my creation in any of the city's trendy boutiques any time soon. This is strictly a one-off production, so, if you find yourself in Manchester any time soon and you see a bloke in an ill-fitting white T-shirt adorned with a purple and blue drawing of what could possibly be the Town Hall clock, but what might just as well be Big Ben, a merino sheep, or that kid in 3S with the National Health Specs, do stop and say hello. Because (unless someone else in the Art Gallery today had the very same idea as me, and I don't think they did) the proud wearer of that T-shirt will almost certainly be me.
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