01 December 2015

Drawing Tuesday - V&A ironwork gallery

The ironwork gallery - so many wonderful things, large and small!
Joyce focussed in on the detail of a screen - looks 1950s, but is 1890s - made by Louis Sullivan for the Chicago Stock Exchange -
 Mags was drawn to a pewter teapot -
Janet K did a blind drawing of this grille by Klaus Walz, 1980, following its line, and then turned to a piece by Guimard, who is best known for his work for the Paris Metro -
 Marina used pencil for drawings of objects and motifs, then superimposed her own interpretations -
 Another teapot, from Janet B -
 I started with locks; this one i based on a 15th century mechanism but with the dragon added about 1900, and then looked at some keys, especially the little labyrinths that made them functional -
At home, some ink made the lock much livelier -
The ironwork gallery has skylights, which makes the reflections situation rather dire for the small items that are displayed under glass. I found it useful to take photos of the keys on my ipad, which could be manoeuvred into as non-reflective a position as possible,
As you can see from this collection of items from the glass cases, cutting out the reflection was tricky, but being able to sit somewhere comfortable and draw from the image on screen was a bit of a luxury.
It was essential, though, to go back and look at the item - the photo doesn't give enough information.

I drew another lock on the ipad, using Brushes - tracing the lines of enough of the lock to be able, later, to draw the whole thing "for real". Some areas were hard to see - and going back to the item for a hard look was "interesting"! An indeterminate splodge in the photo turned out to be something quite unexpected. I added another layer and did the amendments in a different colour -
The layers on the right show the process -

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