Pub Punters

I occasionally accompany my boyfriend to a nearby pub, whenever he gets the urge to watch his favourite team (Spurs) play. But, my interest in watching football only goes so far, and I have an ulterior motive when attending these televised matches. I've found that this particular game draws an interesting, varied and colourful crowd. It's a fantastic opportunity to draw some really great characters.

I've included a couple of loose sketches below. Executed in tens of seconds, I particularly like these drawings, because of the amount of information they portray in so few lines. 

Walking with the animals

The LAS crew  braved a chilly 2 degree celsius at the London Zoo today, all in a bid to study animal movement in preparation for the impending exercise on the four-legged walk cycle, which we'll be covering this week.

It was freezing,  and most of the animals agreed that it wasn't the best day for the zoo, preferring to stay hidden in the warmth of a toasty corner and sleeping the cold away. I tried to track down some of the four-legged animals in the warmer parts of the zoo, and managed to study some llamas, lions and tigers (sleeping), giraffes, okapi, zebras, and a couple of  sturdy looking camels.

The best thing about observing animals from life is that you can really get to notice their different characters and how they hold themselves. Like humans, some are shy, others inquisitive, then there are the bold and the beautiful. There's a whole world of interesting characters to witness and explore.

The main aim of today though was to closely watch the animal's movement and try to imagine what is going on inside with bone structure. This was not so different from our first life drawing session where we drew the model and placed the skeleton inside. Fundamentally, once you know the inside mechanics, it makes it easier to draw the figure more accurately from memory.

I've included a few rough sketches below, where I've attempted to consider the mechanics, as well as movement and form in the various animals.

Giraffes

Giraffes

Llamas

Llamas

Sleeping Tiger

Thinking

During my book illustration class I was given a list of random, unrelated words from this I was asked to merge drawn or found images to a corresponding word, in an attempt to capture the 'spirit' of the concept. This was a fun and testing exercise and is at the heart of what illustration is about. Here I've included couple that I prepared for yesterday's class. I am still working away on a few more for next week's class. Doing this exercise made me really appreciate the ability of words to capture numerous meanings at the same time, which can transform according to context and experiences of the reader.

My intrigue with metamorphoses, inspired by Kafka's short story, has also undergone its own fervent transformation. The next project on the list will be to create a series of drawings in response to his story. However, before starting I have been doing some research into the man himself, Ovid's Metamorphoses that inspired him, and the process found in its many natural forms.

Kafka's story is mostly about the transformation of the unconscious, but I view this also as a type of natural progression and by immersing myself in these processes, perhaps I can later unconsciously express my own learnings in these drawings.

Pictured below is a study of a tadpole, changing into a frog (from the Grant Museum of Zoology) and a regional metamorphism actinolite schist - actinolite limestone from Korea (from the UCL Geology Collection). Both demonstrate extreme and relatively 'violent' processes, and are good examples of how a similar process can be applied in both an inanimate object and living animal.

Pottering away

I have been absent from my regular posting duties, sick with something that smelt suspiciously like Swine Flu. I guess I will never find out what exactly it was, but I do have couple of other experiences to share from some recent sessions with Drawing London. The first is a rare example of an early 'dogu', the most ancient and earliest-dated tradition of pottery in the world, going back to the prehistoric Jomon period. This rare collection is currently on display at The British Museum.

The object I selected to draw was enclosed in a case of its own, held delicately upright by a clear plastic clasp. It is the oldest piece in the collection, dating back to 8000-5000BC.

What caught my eye was the simplicity of its form. At approximately 4 cm high and 1.5 cm wide, its simple curves allude perfectly to a womanly form, something that can still be recognised and communicated thousands of years later. In my render I've attempted to capture its textured form and simple lines.

The next visit with the Drawing London group was at the Grant Museum of Zoology. This museum is jam-packed with skeletons, mounted animals and specimens preserved in fluid. The founder, Richard Edmond Grant was mentor to the young Charles Darwin, which makes this museum extra special.

The object I choose to draw in this case was a mole, an animal that spends most of its life underground and are virtually blind. Perhaps my recent reading of Kafka's Metamorphoses has spurred an intrigue in the 'animal beneath us all'.

Carefully placed on a piece of glass and submerged into liquid, I wanted to show how despite its specimen surroundings, it still maintained soft a luminescence and appeared to be frozen in time.

Mamma Mia!

Tucked away amongst the buildings of the University College London, the grandness of this week's unknown museum was unassuming both by location and layout. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, as it is known, is a university museum set up in 1892 at the bequest of Amelia Edwards, later growing largely from the artifacts gathered by William Petrie and further added to by Henry Wellcome. Objects upon objects were crammed into glass cabinets, divided into rough sections that housed related relics from correlating time periods. Only a few were assigned small cards, giving snippets of details on what they might have been used for many centuries ago.

Much to my suprise, with more than 80,000 objects crammed in together, this museum houses one of the world's greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology. The vast collection provides some enlightening insight into the life in the Nile Valley from prehistory through the age of the pharaohs, Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic times to the Islamic period.

The explanation for it's rather inadequate housing is that it had been moved to these premises for protection during WWII and has not been moved since. Plans for a more spectacular home have been in the pipeline; however, no doubt the recession has had some role in slowing or halting these altogether.

Under instruction to select and draw only one object, I choose a basalt statue from Thebes Dyn XVIII. My eye was taken by this statue, not only by its smooth, geometrically-shaped forms, but also because of the detailed encrypted message on the front plate. It occurred to me that in its time this object was probably treasured for both its craftsmanship and for the meaning of its message. Art here seems to have played both a functional and aesthetic role. Plus, this statue appeared to capture a life-like character, hence offering some insight to what the persons of that time may have been like, or at least represent traits they would have valued.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to finish my drawing. I must mention here that the objective of the class was to describe light and the way it moulds the object, and I could have spent hours building up and following the light over the many contours of this dark object. I've included what I have done so far and will aim to get back there one day.

Exquisite bodies

Another random course I've taken into my stride is 'discovering London's hidden museums' with Draw London. Each week we check out a 'lesser known' museum and draw artifacts and the like that they feature. Last Friday it was held at the Wellcome Collection - a museum that is comprised of the medical fascinations of Henry Wellcome, who had gained his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry. His collection is diverse and expansive. He was intrigued with the differing interpretations of healing practices found throughout the globe. His collection was formed mostly to understand these differences, rather than for the beauty of the objects themselves.

One particular object that took my eye and prompted me to draw was a Peruvian mummy, tucked away in the back corner of the room. This mummified male was from the Chimu people of Peru c. 1200 - 1400. He was laid to rest seated upright, wrapped in fabric, with a false head attached to the bundle. I have included the sketch that I made. For some reason, it was when I started to draw the toes that I really felt like it was a human being, the rest of the body seemed so unreal and distant from our own soft, healthy flesh, even the face had hollowed in to form a spooky looking mask.

At the same museum there was an exhibition called: 'Exquisite Bodies' - the curious and grotesque story of the anatomical model. It was something I had seen advertised and was keen to get my hands on, so I ventured in excitedly after the class finished.

It was interesting to learn that whilst these anatomical wax figures had first been developed for educating medical students and practitioners, it also found another purpose, which was to educate the mostly illiterate lower classes in disease spread and control, and further, in its 'freak show' format, also sought to nurture the dirty fantasies of the people of the day for the peculiar and abnormal. It is unfortunate that the moral campaigners of the time managed to destroy most of the 'peculiar' artifacts, leaving only a handful remaining to be seen today.