Pick Your Own - with Francine of ArtSplash

Former editor and art director of Country Living magazine Francine Lawrence is here to talk about her passion for rekindling people's natural, albeit buried, abilities to draw.

A super talented teacher of art, Francine is also a wonderful story-teller as is evident from our conversation in this episode of SheepDip.

We're delighted to include her company ArtSplash into the fold of our Pick Your Own collection of no-tech teambuilding activities.

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Whilst hundreds of companies have brought their teams to a farm to herd sheep with us at Raising the Baa, we know that the field-based exercises are not for everyone.

So we've raised our own 'baa' and created Pick Your Own. A bespoke collection of sustainable and meaningful activities to bring teams together in the countryside - just perfect for everyone's wellbeing.

Thank ewe for tuning in :-)

Pick Your Own brochure - download here

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What are your main team challenges and desires? Maybe we can help?
Book in a 15-minute Exploratory Call now and let's see.

Transcript

Caroline: 0:28

Hello Francine. Lovely to see you.

Caroline: 0:31

Hi, Caroline.

Caroline: 0:32

now, Francine is looking glorious in red with a lovely red and white headband, red glasses and red lipstick. She's a very energizing image to be interviewing today. So thank you for that. And she's in her studio with lots of pieces of art behind her, is it like a garden studio you've got there?

Caroline: 0:48

It is, it's at the end of my garden, some people call it a shed-io but I like to call it a studio. I thought you were gonna say, some people say it looks like a sauna. It's all wood. Yeah. It's fabulous in here and it does smell nice because it is all wood, but yeah, it's. Great. I can look out onto the garden, but I'm also hidden away as well, which is lovely.

Caroline: 1:09

Remind me, Francine, whereabouts you are speaking to me, from where is your studio?

Caroline: 1:14

Okay, so I'm in North London in Willesden Green Northwest but, pretty central. So it's a nice spot to be in.

Caroline: 1:22

So now Francine is, she is an artist. You can tell by what she's surrounded by, but is that your entire background, an artist or have you been something else and morphed into being, an artist later on in life?

Caroline: 1:33

I guess I was always an artist in some form. I studied graphic design actually at art school about a hundred years ago. And I went into magazine design and I was an art director for magazines for many years. I worked on mainly women's magazines doing layout and, then I jumped to the other side and became the editor of Country Living Magazine. So I married my two passions, which were design and being artistic, if you like and bossing people around, because that's what you do when you're an editor! Country Living Magazine was an absolute dream. I was one of the three that launched it. I do have a passion for the countryside, which is why I have a, an affinity with it. But that's why I think Raising the Baa is such a lovely thing.

Caroline: 2:23

That's interesting, because I used to live and work in London and moved slightly outside of London about which time I did subscribe to Country Living.

Caroline: 2:32

I was a frustrated artist because I wanted to draw, I wanted to paint, and as the art director, I was commissioning other people to go. And do the art for the magazine. So yes, we did it in 1985. I stayed there till 96 when I went off and then became a photographer for about 10 years going around the world, taking photographs. So still using my artistic eye if you like.

Caroline: 2:58

Then it, it really wasn't until, 15 years ago I started to draw and paint. For myself, I think for a long time I lost confidence. It was interesting because even though I had this incredibly, powerful job and it was very artistic I was always doing work for other people and commissioning other people. And it wasn't until I sat down and did some drawing for myself and someone said, oh, that's not bad. I started to think, oh. Maybe I can do it for myself. So I totally understand that thing where people have a long gap between, perhaps school and drawing and want to get back to it.

Caroline: 3:42

About 10 years ago, I went to a party, one of those parties you don't really want to go to. I wasn't in the mood, and a chap said to me, what do you do? And I said, I'll draw and paint a bit. And he said, I wish I could draw. And I said you probably can. And he said, no, I can't. I said, yes, you can. Anyway, I probably had one glass of wine. Too many because then the next day he phoned me and said, I really like what you said. Will you come to my office and teach me to draw?

Caroline: 4:10

Wow. So I did. I went to his office. I went and he'd got his whole team around the boardroom table. He said, okay, teach us to draw. So I did what I could. They liked it, and he said, I'd really like you to start some art classes for the company that I run, which at that time w as running evening classes for people in London and he had confidence in me and booked me to teach a session, which I did. And. Then it all stretched from there and then it got quite busy.

Caroline: 4:46

So I then asked my very dear friend Susie, who I went to art school with, I said, Susie, this is getting so busy. You've got to come and help me. And then we realized that we had something because we got more and more popular and we began. Our teaching together and we formed a little business and called it ArtSplash. And that's what we've been doing for probably just over 10 years now, teaching people who think they can't draw to draw.

Caroline: 5:14

I love that. It's a little bit like us in terms of the fact that it was accidental. you weren't really thinking, oh, I've got a business idea here. It was just, you loved what you did Because you were convinced that people can draw. And the same way that, Chris is totally passionate about sheep, and we have a shared passion for the whole sheep farming area and we just love it that people can come out and yes, we challenge them to, to herd sheep, and that's all part of the team building aspect, but actually just them being in the farm environment and learning a little bit more about agriculture,, yeah, I think it's really important and interesting to, to educate people in that way. When they want it, of course, and that's the lovely thing when they are hungry for it we can provide them with it, which is lovely.

Caroline: 5:54

I think it's lovely to have an excuse to go to the countryside People love visiting the countryside, but if they're 'townies' for want of a better expression, or they're not used to the countryside, they don't quite know what to do when they get there. But you give them an excuse of something to do and to become involved and learn something.

Caroline: 6:11

And in the same way, I think we do with art. because we try to get people to go out with their sketchbooks and we say let's go for a walk. And we take them, it might be into a park, it might be into a street. Which obviously gets people nervous when they're drawing in front of other people, but we've got ways of dealing with that and helping people. But it gives them an excuse to do something.

Caroline: 6:31

And I learned this from going on holiday. I used to take my sketchbooks on holiday with me for years and never get them out of the case because I was nervous of people looking at me when I was drawing. But gradually I got the confidence to do that. But it does give you an excuse to. Be in your surroundings. You can sit down for a coffee at a street cafe. You can get your sketchbook out and it's a lovely excuse for people watching. Or you go to the countryside, sit on the hillside. You could take a photograph, can't you? But that's over in a second and you haven't really engaged or got an involvement with what's around you. people are sometimes nervous about how to start and, we've got a really, we believe a unique way of relaxing people and getting them into drawing.

Caroline: 7:25

I so want to do it. You got me there. I wanna do it. I just think it's, so interesting, especially these days, and a lot of what we are about is getting people away from the screens everything is so quick and instant and over in a moment. And also it. Distracts you. It means you go, oh, I've photographed that, I've done that. I can move on to the next thing. Whereas if you're sitting and just looking at it, never mind drawing it. Even if you just sit and draw and listen for a moment even that can be great and you look around, but then if you can then put pen to paper, if you have the confidence to it, which is the bit you bring, then yeah, what a great way of sitting somewhere and having an excuse to people watch I love it.

Caroline: 8:03

And I would say I haven't ever found anyone who objects to someone doing a sketch of them. if I can just indulge and just tell a little story. one day I went to this lovely market in, I was in Guatemala and I was standing. At right at the back and I started sketching these women who were selling fruit. And they knew that I was sketching them, but they were just carrying on. They were looking and talking to each other and giggling a bit. And then I felt a little tug on my T-shirt and I looked down and there was a little boy with a plastic chair for me to sit on. Which was sent by one of the ladies. Aw. So that was so sweet. So I sat down and they nodded and smiled at me. So I sat down on it and then the next thing I know, I got a little tap on my shoulder. And a little child brought me some food, and then it started to rain. a little boy, brought an umbrella and held it over me. I wasn't there for that long. There was a lovely engagement, which really brought it home to me that if I had been there with my camera and just taken a snap I might have bought some fruit from 'em and just walked away. That would've been gone as it is. I have a sketch in my sketchbook and a memory, and it's a journal of where I was and what I did, and I had a lovely experience and even though the drawing. Wasn't that great. I had a happy experience and there was so much more satisfying. And that's what I, that sort of feeling is what I hope that we can show people how you can learn to draw, we can teach you, we really can. And then when you go on holiday or go to your local park, you can have a really lovely experience.

Caroline: 9:49

Yeah, totally get that. And every time you look at that page, years, decades later, it'll transport you right back to all those stories you just shared. And you'll probably smell the market and all those sorts of things. It just brings everything back, doesn't it? Which is lovely. It's goes even beyond a picture painted a thousand words, doesn't it really? It does all the senses, which is brilliant. It really does.

Caroline: 10:09

Moving forward now, obviously you did this work with this one particular company. Is that how the journey with corporates started or how did it then develop?

Caroline: 10:17

So we found that we were teaching quite a lot of young people who were in working in the city of London. And some of them were on secondment from other countries, or they just were tired of sitting in front of their computer screens, I think, and they needed to do something utterly different and many people just wanted to socialise too. So we found that we got these people from companies and then. They started saying to us, a few of them, We'd love it if you could come in and do some classes within the company. So we began to, do that. Going into, quite often it was banks or even an architects.

Caroline: 10:56

Architects were quite keen to have us come in. One firm, I will not mention the name because they designed huge skyscrapers all over the world. Asked us specifically to come in to teach the guy's perspective. But the reason for that was that they can, obviously they've got computers that do it, put the coordinates in.

Caroline: 11:16

But because they were young people, they had never learned to do old fashioned perspective. That's something that I was taught at art school and just, it's one of those things that when you draw something you. often, you get frustrated when you begin because you sit down and there's a table or there's a building and it just doesn't look right and you don't know why it doesn't look right. But if you just know I've got a 10 minute thing, I show people about perspective and then suddenly it clicks into place and then they understand why. Their drawing didn't look the way they hoped it would come out because they hadn't noticed X, Y, and Z

Caroline: 11:57

Interesting. And do you have a trick on how to draw animals?

Caroline: 12:01

It's about, see what happens is with drawing. All of us have a memory bank in our head, a database of everything we have ever seen in our lives. Every person, every animal, every cup and spoon. That's how we recognize people. And so what happens when we see something that we want to draw like a sheep, for instance, our brain is very powerful, and it'll go through the database, I think of it like an old fashioned Rolodex. and it'll bring up in your mind every sheep you have ever seen, right from cartoon sheep to real sheep, everything. And what'll happen is your brain will take over and it will draw what your brain tells you to draw, not what your eyes tell you. And so that's why we get this frustration that we are drawing something. Oh God, that doesn't look like the sheep that's in front of me. That looks like, I don't know what we know it's got four legs because intellectually, your brain tells you that we know it's got a nose, we know it's got ears, got a tail, And it's woolly, but. We actually are not looking.

Caroline: 13:09

And so if we told people that we were teaching them how to see, they probably wouldn't turn up at our classes. I'm letting you into a secret now, but actually one of the exercises that we do is show people how to see, actually look and then. They get it right. It takes a little while. It takes a few goes because what happens is we're drawing what we think we see, not what we actually see. And we're having to tell our brain to shut up and listen to our eyes. And that's how you get to learn to observe and see and draw and artists practicing. Artists it comes naturally to them because they've done it so many times. Sometimes takes a few goes, but. We've got these little exercises and tricks that get you going really fast.

Caroline: 13:59

Yeah. you're absolutely right. because you can imagine, I quite often just scribble a sheep, if I go somewhere and, you get those sticky name labels and you write your name on them, and I always just write Caroline and then I just draw sheep. For me it's a cloud with four little legs and a couple of ears, and that's it. But at least it's a, it's a talking point But the thing is, when we've had artwork done for by, our graphic designer for our logo and everything going way back when quite a lot of the sheep illustrations, it looks almost like the sheep's only got three legs. But it's just the perspective that you're looking at and it quite often happens. I now go in the field, I. Yeah, I can see where he is coming from. It looks like the sheep's got three legs!

Caroline: 14:33

I just think it actually matches very well what we do with the groups in the field when we're asking to herd sheep, because you're right. What they think they're seeing and what they really should be observing are two actually different things. And it comes with time when they're in the field for maybe two, three hours or whatever. After a while they're thinking. Actually what we thought the sheep were doing was this, but actually what they're really doing is that and obviously Chris facilitates that whole process as well, but they are observing the sheep and their behavior in a very different way to when they first came out. So there are, parallels, which I didn't really expect to think about.

Caroline: 15:06

Yeah. And what happens is when you're drawing animals or people who are moving one of the exercises that we do Is to draw people. And of course people don't stay still. but after a while of observing. You start to anticipate what they will do. that's the secret with animals is that you can't tell them to stay still. They will keep moving. They will turn away from you, but you start to observe the way that they move and you start to get little characteristics of the way that they turn and the angles and so on. And also, when you are doing this. It's not, we're not doing brain surgery here. We're out to relax and enjoy ourselves. So we just want people to enjoy it. And they don't have to do absolutely anatomically correct drawings. Sometimes it's a few lines that. Get them the feel of the sheep. Then you can start relaxing

Caroline: 16:05

Most of our sessions are not longer than two hours 90 minutes is about right. Two hours is. Really good for people who want to carry on and we get messy.

Caroline: 16:16

That's perfect. You must be reading my vibes here, because I was coming onto that very question, which you've now answered about timing and that fits in perfectly with us, for a half day program for clients.

Caroline: 16:27

One of the things I'd really like to know, what is one of the most frequent pieces of feedback that you get from your corporate clients, particularly when they've done one of your workshops?

Caroline: 16:35

One thing, usually the person who's booked us, they often in companies, have a scheme for wellness in the workplace. And it's either the HR department or they've appointed someone for the Ministry of Fun that month to get people coming in because people are working at home so much and they need to interact. And the feedback that the organizers always tell us is that it was amazing. The surprises, the people you think were going to really go for it and be fantastic. Were perhaps the ones who found it harder and often it was the people who were really quiet, who suddenly did amazing things. But the feedback we get from participants is that they hadn't drawn since school days and had forgotten what fun it was.

Caroline: 17:22

There were two standout ones. One was, a chap who was a bit older worked in a bank and We noticed he was really enjoying it and going for it, and he sent us an email after a to say he'd enjoyed it so much. He'd gone out and bought a whole load of art materials and joined a class and was taking art classes at weekends, which was lovely.

Caroline: 17:44

And another one where a young woman burst into tears at the end and said that. Her grandfather had been an artist and she had always wanted to draw, but had been too frightened to try because he had been so good. She felt she could never match him. But with some of the techniques that we had shown her, she realized it was possible and she just, and it was very moving for her.

Caroline: 18:09

They're lovely stories, aren't they? Now, they are individual stories. Have you had any feedback in terms of how it helps a team at all?

Caroline: 18:18

Yes, definitely. What we found with one of our regular clients is that departments that never interacted with each other before. The accounts department and the creative department, who never the twain shall meet, actually bonded in these classes. So departments and people who might have who might have waved to each other, the lift or smiled at each other actually made friendships and, said, ah, yes, let's go to the art shop and buy some materials together. Or, yes, why don't we go and have a coffee and instead of doom scrolling, we'll do some drawing. So it's really helped form friendships and bond departments. I'm sure a happy workforce is a successful workforce, isn't it? And the thing about art is honestly, It's so inclusive. Anyone can do it. The CEO can sit down with the guy from the post room, and draw together. It's such an easy, accessible activity and anyone can do it. And as I said before, it's not brain surgery. It's just a fun thing.

Caroline: 19:21

I love that. and you are absolutely right. I'm quite sure that just by, whether it's art, whether it's herding sheep, I just think that it is just the getting. Together of people when (a) they're so hooked on screens (b) they are in different locations. Any activity which takes them away from those sort of things and gets them using either their hands or just talking to each other in some way, it's got to be good, hasn't it? As you rightly say a happy workforce is generally a more productive one and they're more engaged with their own employer because they feel, actually, if I hadn't have been for my employer, then I might not be here. Discovering that I can draw again or discovering that I really enjoy just being out in the fresh air or whatever. So yeah, win-win.

Caroline: 19:59

Now one of the things that we do hold dear to our heart at Raising the Baa and it has grown over the years, is sustainability, I say grown because actually there are certain aspects of our business that we, it's not just our business or our life that we've just been doing all the time. We haven't really been shouting about it 'cause it's just part of the way we are. But of course, increasingly sustainability is so important to ourselves and our clients and everybody. Is there a particular. element of ArtSplash, which you feel proud of in terms of sustainability?

Francine: 20:29

Yeah, I think so. first of all, materials we use non-toxic materials, watercolour mainly. Even the watercolour pens that we use are all non-toxic non- staining. Nothing nasty goes back into the water system. We don't use acrylic paints in these classes. We try very much to use recycled paper. We use charcoal. It's all natural ingredients. And that's the lovely thing about art. of course we're not using up energy with tech screens and things like that. And in fact we really love it when people, if they're outside drawing, can incorporate a bit of the environment into their drawing. Say they're in a field with the sheep, there might be some mud or some, maybe a bit of burnt charcoal that they can pick up and use. You never know and incorporate it. So we like to blend it in.

Caroline: 21:21

I wonder where you were going to go then! I thought you were going to say a bit of sheep....

Francine: 21:24

(laughs) There is a famous artist, Chris Ofili, who does use certain vegetarian animals' stuff in his art.

Caroline: 21:31

There had to be, there had to be somebody out there that uses it. At the end of the day, it's just grass, isn't it? So on that note, that's a lovely note to end on, isn't it?

Caroline: 21:40

But no, actually I had one final question, which I didn't ask earlier. Now you're based in London. What out of interest is your radius that you would travel in order to deliver one of your workshops with us?

Francine: 21:50

Driving is ideal because we do bring a few bits of equipment with us, so I would say just beyond the M 25, perhaps a bit more. We do actually, having said that, w e do classes in Devon, and that means going and staying overnight. But yes, for a 90 minute or two hour session, I think it has to be within two hours driving of London.

Caroline: 22:13

Excellent. That's perfect because we have farm venues around, just on the outskirts, the M 25, the home counties essentially, which I think would be perfect really. Yeah, we're really looking forward to welcoming ArtSplash to a farm and having people not only herd sheep, but also then get their pens and papers out and just start to feel free with some with some art in the safe hands of you and Susie.

Francine: 22:35

We really would love to do it. Any excuse to get away to the countryside and we'd bring everything with us so people don't need to worry about having to bring anything. We really look forward to getting out and meeting the sheep.

Caroline: 22:48

Thanks so much for your time, Francine. Have a lovely day.

Francine: 22:51

Okay. Thank you.