My Little ‘Pi-Cow-So’ – a drawing class with Cadburys

One of the things that Jessica has definitely inherited from me is a love of drawing. It’s something I’m happy to encourage, although there are days when I wonder if my paper supply is up to Jessica’s enthusiasm for drawing pictures! We were recently invited to attend a drawing class with illustrator Rose Blake and Cadburys chocolate.  It was the perfect opportunity for me to enjoy some one-to-one time with Jessica doing something that we both love.

 

 

The ‘Little Pi-Cow-So’ session was all about meeting Buttons, the animatronic Cadbury cow and learning how to draw her. We were greeted with a moo as we entered the room and came face to face with a life size, and very realistic cow! Thankfully she was a very friendly cow! Jessica was quite fascinated by Buttons. She was quite happy to get up close and say hello (and “moo”) to her.

 

Buttons was created for the Cadbury Dairy Milk Buttons Adopt a Cow campaign. This campaign gives families the opportunity to ‘adopt’ a cow via an on-pack promotion. They will then receive email updates about ‘their’ cow during the promotion. There is also a competition for 20 families to win an overnight trip to the farm to meet their cow.

 

I grew up living opposite farm fields. Seeing cows was part of normal daily life for me. My own children have only really seen cows on days out at farms though. Many city children have little experience of seeing cows. According to research, 1 in 10 city children think cows are the size of a double-decker bus and more than 10 percent think they’re the size of a cat.

 

Buttons is a life-size cow. She is controlled through a mixture of robotics and two highly skilled puppeteers. It took a team of 20 prop specialists more than 500 hours to create her. They spent more than 300 hours studying the movements of real cows to ensure she was a realistic as possible. She certainly was very impressive standing there watching us all draw, and occasionally mooing at us!

 

 

The drawing class was hosted by illustrator Rose Blake. There were easels set up around the room and we were given workbooks to guide us through drawing a cow. Jessica has never tried to draw a cow before. I was quite impressed by her first attempt at doing so. She has quite an eye for little details. Having spotted Buttons sticking her tongue out earlier, she decided to add this in to her picture.

 

 

Once Jessica had finished drawing Buttons, she added in one of the haybales. She then put herself “on her school trip” in the picture, wearing her red summer school dress. Kerry, Jessica’s dolly, is one of Jessica’s favourite subjects when it comes to drawing and so naturally she appeared in the picture too.

 

When Jessica had finished her drawing, she showed it to Buttons. I love the way that Buttons seemed to study it intently before nodding her head as if she approved. We finished off our fun drawing session with some yummy Cadbury’s Dairy Milk buttons and Jessica received a goody bag to take home.

 

 

We were invited to attend the Cadbury’s ‘Little Pi-Cow-So’ session for the purposes of writing this post. The Adopt a Cow competition ends on 31st August 2017. For more information about the Adopt a Cow campaign, please visit https://adoptacow.cadbury.co.uk/