Sketchbook course, weeks 2 and 3

The course runs on a Monday and in the UK, May has two Bank Holiday Mondays, which makes things confusing and slightly fractured. First, the still life from week 2 (after the first holiday Monday) -

The smudgy areas are the result of not being allowed an eraser - instead, we scribbled over the misplaced lines and then rubbed the area with a folded-up paper. It adds interest, shows the process of becoming...

Then, photocopying and adding those images to the sketchbook, either on the original drawing, or cutting through as we did the previous week.

the page before the actual drawing, with bits transferred

the drawing, with additions

the page after the  original drawing

This week we were in the cast court of the V&A - not much fun, I thought - a crowded, higgledy-piggledy place, hard to position oneself so as not to be "in the way"; interruptions from this'n'that, hard to get into the drawing itself. For those of us less than enamoured of the actual objects, the tutor suggested looking at the juxtapositions in the space, and eventually that worked for me. (Having a stool helped - thanks to the kind warder who brought me one. Finding a stool at the V&A is sometimes impossible!)

We used the smaller sketchbooks in the museum, and next week will take these pages into the larger sketchbooks.

First a bit of grappling with foreshortening (unsuccessful, but I was so grumpy at this point) -

Richard I, in Rouen Cathedral

Then a bit of juxtaposition -

and some more in an area nearby -

which was intended to add the area to the right, on another sheet of paper

until finally, elsewhere again -

Others in the class found much of interest in this wonderful screen -

Next Monday is the second May bank holiday Monday, so no class - but a chance in the interval to go back to the museum and get on with the drawing in a better mood ... and with some interest in the possibilities...