Sketching at Ally Pally

Alexandra Palace has a fabulous view and a palm court, complete with sphinxes - so even if it had been raining, we would have had plenty to draw.

The view (via)

The Palm Court (via)

I'd been looking forward to the vegetation, but the piped music (from the cafe/bar) drove me out into the sunshine, looking for "something" ...

Glimpse of an architectural view 

Could be interesting...

More fractured patterns

One criterion was to be able to sit somewhere, another was to be out of the wind, and finally I settled down to try the criss-crossing on the historic aerial, or rather, the bristly aerial that's in a historic place, the site of the first television transmission in the UK -

Looking up and looking down repeatedly, I soon felt the aerial was about to topple. Or is it an optical illusion?

The interlaced geometry of pylons is intriguing - might be my starting point for the Structures quilt challenge later this year (so many possibilities with that one!). The lion's head, of which there are many around the building, was a prelude to going to draw the Assyrian lion hunt the next day. Here's what they really look like -

On the way back to the Palm Court, convenient seating enabled an attempt to capture this -

The angles of the glass and the spacing of the girders was minutely, intensely frustrating ... and based on an entirely wrong angle: it tilts! How could I not have noticed that!

The medium is soluble graphite, but no solubility took place in this instance, just a lot of erasing. Lots of valuable lessons here, so instead of tearing out the page or whatever, it'll stay ... and the first thing I'll rework is those windows on the left: they tilt! How could I not have noticed that!

What joy to go inside and draw leaves -

And to see what others in the group had done -

On the way home, a visit to the garden centre, where the groupings of pots called to my pencil -

But it stayed in the bag. Something for another day?