Drawing Tuesday - Natural History Museum

From the gallery of the Mammals room in the Blue Zone of the Natural History Museum, you can clearly see the dust on the Right Whale skeleton.  I drew the front view twice: with grainy coloured pencil, and chunky graphite stick - both watersoluble, but I didn't try out the waterbrush ...

On to the side view - I was curious about those floating bones -

The heart-shaped bone is the breastbone (sternum), but the others? One day I'll find out ... it's fascinating that whales developed from a land mammal, some 50 million years ago, and still have vestigial leg bones. 

The "nose" - an extension of the skull - is called the rostrum, and the baleen plates go into the cavity above the lower jaw.

HB pencil; coffee wash added later

Apologies for the strange lighting effects on some of the next pix - cafe tables with dim light or spotlights are not ideal for photography.

Janet K captured birds -

 Carol zoomed in on architectural details -

 Judith found lovely feathers on the Victoria Crowned Pigeon -

 Joyce was among the colourful minerals -

 Janet B found an unlikely pairing in the Mammals room -

 Mags was looking for pleiosaurs -

 Extracurricularly ... Janet B had been drawing in a faraway museum last week -

 ... this led to "homework" - draw "a creature" - from life or from a museum or from a photograph.

Mags had been up north on a retreat, developing surreal collage and mark-making in piano-hinge books, among other activities ...