Drawing Tuesday - "from my collection"

 It's hard to go through life without any sort of collection of objects, so the "collections" topic gives lots of drawing possibilities. This group started out to go drawing objects in museum collections - and now we're treating our homes, and the online world, like those museums, as repositories of collections.

Also we can draw on our collections of drawings...

From Jo - From a collection of "modernist" pebbles. Unfortunately the two "best" ones (in a "safe place") so those remain to be done another time. It makes me despair of "art" really, when "nature" is so talented!

From Carol -  an early drawing in 2016 when I was using A6 books and very fine pens, not yet brave enough for colour. It’s a very interesting exercise to go back and see how your work has changed and I don’t feel it has stopped changing yet. After very much enjoying drawing at O level I spent most of my life being too busy for it with a feeling that it was not a ‘purposeful’ enough pastime, my parents view I think –then it sort of exploded out (in a tiny A6 sort of way).

From Sue B - A watercolour of tuscan hills through a newly erected arbor….2019, which was the year when I really started sketching in colour again, following a gap of 41 years after A level!

From Mags - I've been going through my indigo stash including a selection of Ndope strip cloth pieces from Cameroon, bought from John Gillow. I did have a go at drawing a small fragment last year, you see so much when you draw, the variations in hand twisted thread for a start.

From Janet K - Happy friends.

From Joyce - some pebbles pick up from Climping beach, I can’t resist picking interesting stones and shells.

From Judith - From my collection of stencils and french curves that due to computer Aided Design have become obsolete except for stitchers and fashion design!

From Janet B - I finally managed to sit down for an undisturbed hour and draw these two rock and roll teapots from my extensive collection of kitsch. 

From Jackie - A collection of earrings  from :

Top Row:         Cambridge, mother in law’s costume jewellery..50’s, V & A, S Africa

Second row:    Hong Kong, India,  Scotland, Iran

Bottom row:     my mum’s collection, India, Islington, Israel

From Ann - A sombre painting from 35 years or more. The plight of refugees.

From Sue K - Here’s my piece from my batch of personalised handmade birthday cards. This was for Richard’s November birthday - he loves mushrooms, (sadly l’ve developed a serious aversion) so l found a selection of edible wild mushrooms to get interesting shapes & colours to make the letters.

From Gill - my collection of shells found and bought. As my sister gave me a big box of metallic acrylics for Christmas I have used them all to colour in the shapes and now have a colour and pigment reference of them.

From Najlaa - From perfume pictures I collect.

From me - My own "collection" refers to research for this term's woodblock printing project, "something to do with Children's Day" - I zero'd in on kokeshi dolls, checked them out online, and quickly bought this one -

They are made in the forested northeast of Japan - this short video made in 2011 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfPapG4EnPg&ab_channel=JapanstoreTV) shows the process of making them.

Finding more images online, I "collected" various faces in the traditional style -

and also traditional patterns, mostly sashiko, for the figures' kimonos -

To give you an idea of where this is going - a two-block print, about A4 size

I used the waste areas of the figures to practise cutting the fine details of the faces (they need to be even smaller) and to try the white-line patterning -

Ah, nature!

The week included a trip to Kew Gardens for the purpose of drawing. But we spent a lot of time looking at trees ... I have a fascination for Swamp Cypress with its knobbly roots - known as knees - that may help the waterlogged tree to breathe -

 These roots belong to a Mexican Cypress -

These ...

 ... became this -

The little blob is definitely not a squished insect!

 Inveterate collector, I found seeds and other bits on the ground

 and took them home, to spend time looking hard at them -

 A forgotten bag containing an earlier collection yielded these -

for subsequent observation and recording, though I forget what they are. Larch and alder and oak and London plane are among them, but what are the long dark ones?

The strong winds have sent pairs of reddened crabapples cascading from a tree round the corner, but those on another street, a different variety, clung tightly -

 And the back garden at Tom's has had a deluge of apples from the tree next door, each with signs of a resident insect and some with a bruise. Two grandmothers spent a congenial hour collecting, chopping and peeling (and discarding) and making apple puree to be frozen for porridge and/or for the grandbaby -

The teapots are not for sale!

The teapots once sold in the Gill Wing gift shop have come together to make quite a collection - 1500 or so. The shop was opened on Upper Street in 1980 to sell designer products and contemporary ceramics, including the teapots made in Stoke-on-Trent. It was the first shop of its kind in an Islington that was rapidly gentrifying.

I stopped in to make an impulse purchase, attracted by the sale price ... as often happens....



Back home, a hopeful glance out the skylight and beyond the chimneys at the supermoon, still some hours away from its eclipse-moment -

But when it came to it, the clouds had moved in  over Stroud Green Road. Better luck next time?

Table top museums

A wonderful visit, as part of Open House London, to the Art Workers Guild yesterday. The building is amazing, especially the light fittings -

Even more wonderful was the Table Top Museum show in the big hall. So much to wonder at, in these displays put on by dedicated collectors!

Mandy talked me through some highlights from her selection of interesting objects from car boot sales and elsewhere -

A graphite sculpture, showing some signs of having been used for drawing

In the stapler box ... "my daughter's arm"

Clay whistles in the shape of animals - you can play a tune on them

Tins for needles, and an ashtray with the shipping forecast areas

 Going round the room, wonder after wonder met the eye....

A rainbow of disposable ice cream spoons
[were those stickers on the light switches always there?]

The Rough Sea Postcard and Associated Ephemera Museum

Things made of wood, including a mysterious object
"designed and made by Kay Bojesen, originally
designed in 1932; Denmark"

Mincers!

In the cabinet of tiny things, a knitted grub!

Breadboards

Feathers

Cows (I covet the pencil box on the right)

"My consumption diaries: a glimpse into trough and basket"
complete with evaluation and price paid

Wonderful things collected on travels around the world

I do hope this wonderful museum of museums will pop up again!

Monday miscellany

Vintage fairground rides -

 Colour, on the streets -

 A simple but effective book cover -

 Bits of metal I saved for some reason -