25 August 2015

Drawing Tuesday - Wallace Collection

Before starting to draw A45 I had a long close look, and read the description in the catalogue of armour -



The vocabulary! - helmet, yes, but what's a buffe, or for that matter a cuisse and greave, pauldron, gorget ... the poleyn wings and couter wings of the visor? This is a specialised world, another sort of universe...

Here's the outcome of a morning's work. He's looking a bit grumpy because not only is he more asymmetrical than he should be (especially that withered right leg!), but his feet have been cut off and he's lost a hand. I did love adding in the little rivet heads -
When it got too daunting, I noted down some shapes from across the room, especially the chain-mail sleeve and the sallet with its interesting buffe (A189)
or else tried to decipher the swirls of the rapier handle from a distance -
All distraction... but eventually A45 was complete, if asymmetrical, and it was time for coffee and seeing what the others had found.

Jo focussed on some non-armour and then "in the spirit of the thing" delineated this fellow in mere moments -
whereas among Mags' studies of rapiers - including a page of their blades - was this exploration of various drawing materials -
Cathy caught the gleam of metal and the interesting armour for a horse -
 and Janet worked on a companion piece to the back-end-of-a-horse done at a previous session here -
At home, curious about the names of the various bits, I found a relevant book -
part of the British Museum's "Medieval Craftsmen" series, published in 1992, at which time it was selling for £6.95 - now it can be had for £23 or more online, whew!

I added a couple of sets of armour from the book to my page of diversionary sketches, including one that didn't have arms because of being shielded during jousting.

Sorry about the dull photo - between them, the camera and the computer are on all sorts of last legs, desperately needing replacement.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Love the specialized lingo for the armor. Gorget got me thinking and looking on line. "The bright-colored area on the throat and chin is called a gorget. Female hummingbirds do not have a gorget." I've seen it used to describe necklaces as well.

Great bunch of drawings!
Diane