Drawing Tuesday - Wallace Collection

We were back in the quiet rooms of the armour collection - even at half-term, not that many visitors, though I was able to listen in on a lovely conversation between an 11-ish lad and his grandfather, who obviously knew a lot about armour and weapons, but was letting the boy guide the conversation rather than overwhelming him with information.

The twirly bits on the swords fascinate me. Even though I've drawn them several times, I still don't have a real, 3D idea of what's going on. 

So here's another attempt to "get a handle" on the hilt and especially the guard of various swords, starting with blind drawing and moving towards 3D -

Carol too went for the swords - in her new sketchbook; she said the larger size was freeing -

Janet K focused on decoration of a mysterious large object; she might return to do a larger version of Neptune and the sea-dragons -

In her A4 sketchbook Michelle used her Blackwing pencil on a couple of the objects seized from King Kofi Karikari of Asante, Ghana in 1873, the handle of the processional sword, and the gold trophy head -

Najlaa enjoyed the layers of the armour, so like pleating in fabric -

More swords, from Sue M, who heard all about the Puritan sword thanks to a conversation of two curators: it was to be used only for self-defence -

Sue S started with pencil, then used graphite and neocolour on the visor of russetted steel*, which lay on a red background -

Janet B participated from afar, drawing in Dundee's museum.


*In its article on Greenwich armour, Wikipedia says that armour was coloured in three main ways:

bluing, browning, and russeting. Bluing the steel gave it a deep, brilliant blue-black finish. Browning, as the name would suggest, coloured the steel a dark brown, which contrasted vividly with gilding. Finally, russeting imparted a dark-red or purple hue to the steel, which was also typically used in conjunction with gilding. All of these base colours would be applied uniformly to the steel of the armour, and then strips of differently coloured steel would be laid across to create patterns, or etched sections of the armour would be gilded.