margaret-cooter: Drawing Tuesday

This was the 11th Drawing Tuesday at the Wallace Collection, since October 2014. Mostly we've been drawing in the armour galleries. They are also visited by schoolchildren (en masse) and by enthusiasts, and it's a pleasure to overhear curators giving select tours.

I settled in between a case of helmets and another of these knives, which I'd tackled in an early visit -

But it was this case in the distance that, behind its reflections and at some distance, caught my eye -

In it, I later found, one of the long swords had an inscription along the blade -

... on both sides ...

The catalogues of armour and weapons were published in 1962; very little information on the exhibits is given in the cases, just a number, and you must consult the books to find out anything about them. And then the information is peppered with arcane words like quillions and gadroons, not to mention the writhen knobs.

What next? a change of scene - mailoica with grotesques -

Made in Gubbio, Italy, early 16th century

Having used "dark" pencils for the swords, I tried using a fine felt pen for the plate - and it was utterly the wrong medium, or perhaps the wrong scale. Changing to an HB pencil for the right side was such a relief. Ideally a fluid medium would have been best. I loved figuring out how the grotesque shapes fit together and look forward to drawing more of this crazy stuff.