Tuesday is drawing day - 4

The Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood is like a great big barn, and all those hard surfaces make it very echoey, with nowhere to get away from noise. As it's half term, it was full of children - as you might expect!

I wasn't really paying attention to the kids, though some of the planned activities were rather boistrous. There was a seat in front of the display of children's clothes through the ages, among which were these petulant, wary, abashed, well-behaved dolls -

They are Lenci dolls from the 1920s, made of pressed felt, wearing what look to be hand-knit sweaters and socks.

After spending the entire morning drawing them (and trying out the "aquarellable" qualities of the Neopastels on the boy), I feel very well acquainted with them, and find their expression more interesting than the gaze-into-your-eyes, sweetly-smiley rather-sad dolls of today.

My box of Neopastels contained 10 colours, and no brown, which would have been very useful. Some liberties needed to be taken ... I rather like the inaccurate colours, eg yellow faces and purple in the hair (but am not happy with his clothes, and rather overdid the amount of her hair). It was pure pleasure, though, to mess around with the waterbrush - a new experience. A little colour goes a long way with these pastels.

At one point I heard a woman saying, "Girls, come over here and watch this lady drawing" - I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Madam, I am not an exhibit!" The girls, however, were delightful and we had a nice little talk about the dolls. They came back later with a friend to see how the drawing was getting on.

Karen had come along to draw; at 1pm we escaped from the acoustic and all those kids.

Next Tuesday (Nov 4) - V&A. The glass gallery is usually fairly quiet, but whether any sketching stools can be found remains to be seen.


(This post is part of Off the Wall Friday.)