42nd World Wide SketchCrawl Day at Manchester University Museum

Unlike the lucky folks living in warm, sunny climes, SketchCrawl North decided it would be prudent to spend World Wide SketchCrawl Day indoors. We've done Sheffield's museums to death, so we took the train to Manchester, to the natural history museum. 

The museum is a real treasure and much bigger than I expected. It's stuffed full with all sorts. As you can see, I really got into the skeletons. 

One room was dominated by a massive T-Rex (the favourite of all the children visitors): 

One of my favourites was the elephant skeleton. I had no idea that inside their big, stubby feet, they have the bones for long toes:

As well as skeletons and stuffed creatures, there was a vivarium, with live snakes, frogs and lizards. I chose the chameleon because he was sitting nice and still. Only his eye swivelled round, keeping tabs on passing faces through the glass.

At the end of the afternoon, we met up with the Manchester group, sharing our sketchbooks and getting to know one another. Fantastic. 

I stayed later than the rest of the Sheffield team and, travelling home alone, watched the man opposite me get out a sketchbook. We got talking and by coincidence he turned out also to be a professional illustrator. The train was horribly delayed, so it was great to spend the journey chatting and checking out each other's art equipment (that sounds really nerdy actually...).