Drawing Tuesday - ironwork at V&A

Lots of lovely linear things, like this lecturn - but no space near it for settling in on a drawing stool -

This grille was far away but enticing - symmetrical except for the mermaid in the middle - perfect for charcoal -

What I didn't know was that charcoal is now prohibited in the V&A. The warder who broke the news very kindly let me finish the drawing "but do be quick, we've got one of the curators coming to look at an object incident" (someone had been tampering with a screw, perhaps with a view to removing the object).

After a week of being carried around, the drawing has now mirrored itself -

Next challenge (pencil this time) is this 17th century German bracket - again, it was the 3Dness that attracted me -

The proportions and angles were made trickier to capture by the slanting lines around it. And there turned out to be "more than meets the eye". This is the point where I nearly gave up -

Some time later, a bit wishy-washy, a bit inaccurate, but all there -

Next time, contrast - contrast, contrast, contrast!

Michelle was capturing pattern (with enviable contrast) -

I know she develops her sketchbook pages when she gets back home - a lesson to us all. The simple design here could have many developments -

Mike was certainly using contrast - a screen by Guimard, who did the Paris Metro entrances -

and these are by jeweller Wendy Ramshaw -

Afterwards I went back and observed variations in curlicues -

Those are 19th century copies of older ironwork, so I went to look at "the real thing" in the medieval galleries - the Chichester Screen, for example, 12th century -

Along the way, wonderful shadows from the ironwork gallery's centrepiece (19th century) -