Big Draw East Midlands Launch 2005

The Big Draw attracted around 350 visitors - more than a usual quiet autumn Sunday - and there was a real buzz around the site.

Adults and students were as keen to get involved as families with children. You could often observe grown ups being a bit hesitant at first then becoming totally engrossed in drawing.

Most children, of course, were happy to just dive in and get started with all the fantastic pencils and colour crayons laid out for them to use.

The activities were very successful in engaging visitors with artworks. Susie MacMurray's balloon and latex glove dresses inspired surreal characters and fantastical landscapes.

Brick the cartoonist always had a room full of eager pupils and Jane Stockley's miniature portrait sessions engrossed adults as much as children, especially when she encouraged them to 'polish' out wrinkles with just a 2B pencil.

A roll of paper in the Enchanted Forest family gallery became inhabited not just with finger families but inventive exotic and colourful creatures created by drawing around hands.

All around the site people were talking excitedly about drawing and everyone had a fabulous day.