Drawing Tuesday - Science Museum

In the Flight Gallery (3rd floor), the little brown thing amid the black shapes caught my eye. The black shapes at the back are models of wings shapes for Concorde; the one in front is a free-fall model of the BAC221, 1/6th scale model, developed as part of the Concorde programme - the free-fall models were taken up by helicopter and released under radio control, to test the control responses and stability, and particularly the ability of the aircraft to recover from a spin.

The little brown thing is a 1955 model of what came to be known as the Hovercraft. one of Sir Christopher Cockerell's models. I knew the curves were going to be challenging, and had to try different views before finishing the main one -

For something completely different, I chose this -

The one-man seaplane dates to 1931, the "Pterodactyl" to 1921, and the tail on the right belongs to a Hurricane (1938; over 14,500 were produced up to 1944, and each took 10,300 working hours to make).

The seaplane introduced flush riveting -

- compare it with ordinary rivets -

The planes seemed to have more struts and wires every time I looked at them -

Apart from the low-level lighting, and - as in every museum, it seems - an unwatched video, with loud sound track, on loop, it was an interesting place for drawing - airplanes are wonderful machines, and it's in a museum you see the prototypes that didn't get developed further.

Mike drew the Vickers Vimy, 1919, which flew the Atlantic non-stop -

 and this needle-nosed plane -

 as well as the fatal flaw that caused the Comet to crash - metal fatigue around the rectangular windows -

Having drawn what she thought was a propeller-driven machine, Jo realised it had blades and was actually a helicopter -

Sue chose the flying boat and the hooded man - and crankshaft -

We agreed the dummies used for the helmets were strangely ghostly; Janet had encountered them too, as well as a tiny balloonist -

as well as a biplane -

 Mags took on the challenge of the foreshortening in this propeller -

 and then the many wires in this model -

and finished with something more relaxing, boomerangs -

Open House London

Quite by chance I got to two of the Open House venues - not the much-sought-after, book-in-advance ones, but of interest in their own small ways.

The Goldsmiths Centre had, as well as an exhibiton of "40 jewellers, 40 years" which continues until 19 November, the barriers open so you could see the training facilities there. This machine caught my eye so I whipped out the notebook and quickly committed it to paper - before realising that though the camera had been left at home, the smartphone has a camera -

A series of offices/workrooms, with suspended glass sliding doors -

The oval table is massive, would seat 16 easily!

This peaceful, empty meeting room brought to mind the poem by William Stafford that begins "Starting here, what do you remember? / How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?" -

No poetic references for the other venue ... a 1900s butcher shop near to me, on a rather sad stretch of Hornsey Rise. 

The shop, W. Plumb, has been shut since 1992 and now its windows have an extra layer of frosted glass. Mr Travers, who now owns the shop, has been lovingly restoring it, and living in a flat in the building, since 1996. He and his partner did a splendid job taking the paint off the wooden cashier's box -

before

after

and sourcing Victorian tiles to repair the worst ravages to the floor -

The wall tiles and especially the painted panels are what make the shop glorious -

Once there were two more of the "rural" panels, scenes from Hampstead Heath, on an island-counter on the other side of the room, but the island had to be replaced with a refrigerated cabinet and the panels were lost. 

The shop is available for parties, dinners, events, photo shoots, etc. 

Doing the donkey work

With freshly-cleared worktops comes a chance to photograph all the ceramics, measure and "catalogue" them, decide which to keep, and pack the survivors away, labelling the containers with the contents.

I also hazily imagine myself spending time drawing them - large! - as a way of moving forward in some direction or other.

It's taking a while. Much "donkey work" needs doing; I'm looking on this drudgery as a chance to think about how some of the pots might be grouped, with a view to displaying them ... somewhere, sometime, somehow. It's this "play" factor that is stretching out the time.

First, a trawl through all the photo folders (organised by month), moving anything ceramic to its own folder ("Ceramics"). That includes the photos of the fabric versions. Then, grouping various categories (by adding a prefix to the photo name; it would have been easier to move them to a sub-folder) and printing sheets of thumbnails.

Into the studio and search for all the stored ceramics, remembering that a few are languishing on top of the bookcase in the other room. Bring those into the studio -

Unpacking, unwrapping continues. and things I've entirely forgotten come to light, such as last year's experiments with paper and twisted cotton thread -

Eventually a number of "chimneys" and pots made by dipping fabric into porcelain slip, some with added metal fabric or threads, are assembled -

After the "group photograph", some latecomers appear - what had looked like a ceramic city now looks more like a flood -

For the measuring (important because I'm thinking of making boxes or bags for some of these, alone or in combination) I've made a time-saving grid for determining the diameter, and raised it from the surface to take the blank space on the ruler into account -

As well as the measuring and photographing, there's some (ongoing) auditioning of pieces for framed groups incorporating some flat pleated pieces -

Another thing that's happening is matching up the fabric "before" with the ceramic "after" -

Sinamay Suite

Brand name, or generic term? And why?

I recently worked on an exhibition catalogue that listed the materials and techniques of the quilts shown. One aspect of copy-editing it was to decide whether to use the brand names of the products that the contributors listed.

This was hardly a dilemma as it's totally unnecessary to do so - we weren't getting any financial contribution from the manufacturers of these products, nor were these tutorials on techniques that depended on the performance qualities of a certain product rather than something similar but not identical.

So any material that started with a capital letter got a very suspicious look. Here's my list of trade names, and the generic terms to replace them. It's not a complete list by any means.

Brusho colour - concentrated watercolour

Egyptian cotton - cotton

fabric dyed by a named company or a named individual = commercially hand-dyed fabric

Inktense pencils - water soluble ink pencils

Lutradur - non-woven polyester 

Manutex - dye thickener (Procion dyes thickened with Manutex = thickened fibre-reactive dyes)

Markal sticks – oil sticks

Pima cotton – cotton

Procion dye – fibre-reactive dye

Superior Razzle Dazzle thread (or any named thread) = thread

Thermofax screens – screens

Transfoil – transfer foil

Xpandaprint – expandable printing medium

One that gave me trouble was

Angelina - heat bondable fibres? synthetic fibres? (some are not heat bondable)

Any suggestions?

In the art-gallery world, labels for drawings, prints, and photographs seem more and more to be stating the type, ie manufacturer, of paper used. No doubt different papers have different qualities, but you don't see "2B pencil" or "Golden watercolours" along with "Hannemuhle archival paper". I cynically wonder whether this is a kickback to the paper manufacturer, in return for a bit of generosity towards the artist. But maybe it's just the artist or gallery being reassuring to their customers that the artwork is made with best quality materials?

In Oxford today

Renowned author Philip Pullman and children's laureate Chris Riddell are launching The Big Draw 2015 today, and among the activities there's a Walk & Draw trail -

Map by Adam Dant

Pullman says: "I’m really looking forward to The Big Draw because drawing is such a pleasure that I want everyone to share it. The feeling of a sharp pencil moving over a piece of good paper is a delight to the hand as well as to the eye. By far the best way to see things clearly is to draw them, and looking and drawing are a key to understanding the world in quite different ways from listening and reading. Literacy is vital, of course, but it would be wonderful to give everyone—adult as well as child—a chance to master picturacy as well."

The Big Draw is happening throughout the country throughout October - check the website for events near you.

Renate (Meyer) Keeping

A visit to the Keeping Gallery in Shortlands - set up in their home by the wife of Charles Keeping after his death in 1988 -

Both artists had studios on the ground floor and these, as well as other rooms and hallways, hold their work. Renate died last year, shortly before a major show of her work at the Knitting and Stitching show. One of the rooms in the museum keeps her "life story" embroideries behind glass -

Along with the finished work is the design source -

Renate could write in stitch, and set out much of the family's history that way, including images derived, often, from packaging -

Properly photographed, and with some annotation, these would make a fascinating book.

Renate was also a book illustrator - here are two of hers -

Charles of course illustrated many books, some very dramatically; they fill a cupboard. This one, for example, is his illustrated version of an autobiographical incident; the book it became is on the right -

Some of his gentler lithographs hang in the hallways -

Renate was a prodigious embroiderer, and had been a member of the 62 Group of textile artists; it is her work on the cover -

 Her series of aging apples, painted and then stitched, was on display at Knit&Stitch, and it was great to see them again, up close -

 and all together -

Another series involved eggs -

My eye was drawn to these textiley teapots, which were made in the ceramics department of Camberwell "years ago" by daughter Vicky -

This piece, Vicky explained, was based on a hospital bedstead and had the finges made by rolling out huge long thin rolls of porcelain clay -

Do go to the gallery's website and watch the welcome video.