Drawing Tuesday - from home

The week before last we were due to meet at the Wallace Collection but everyone was getting somewhat nervous about travelling and/or leaving the house. Me too but I did sneak out to the kimono exhibition at the V&A - and the next day the museum closed. 

So many, so sudden! However the museums are making extra things available online, so we need not be deprived of lovely objects to look at and learn about. 

Drawing Tuesday will continue, online too. The idea is to make a "space" for drawing every week, so on Tuesdays we'll be spending 10.30-12.30  in the comfort of home, able to use waterbased media and charcoal (not possible in an actual museum) and saving all that travel time. Afterwards, we share the results by email. I gather the images and stories and put them into a blog post.

This week the theme was TABLECLOTHS, taken from a random page  I looked at while making a (partial) list of interesting museums to visit online.*

The cross-stitch motifs on a chinese tablecloth brought to mind the symmetrical motifs, made from the centre outwards, in many cultures' textile traditions, and particularly the one I'd stitched at "the workshop that changed my creative life" [long story, maybe later...] at the Museum of Mankind in 1989, part of the glorious Palestinian Costume exhibition.

I bought the book and have looked at it often -

 My little piece has an area of protective blue at the centre, to ward off the evil eye. It's been hanging in my studio for decades. 

 My plan was to use watercolour and build up some similar designs, using colours and motifs from my piece and the chinese tablecloth.

It didn't go as hoped, but at the end of the session I felt more comfortable making marks with the various brushes I tried. Maybe later I'll do something more freeform with "cross stitch" in my sketchbook. Or on fabric?

From Carol:  I would not have thought about this family heirloom which has not been looked at for many years if it wasn’t for drawing Tuesday ‘online’

A rather twee 30 ladies in crinolines. Started by my Mum in the 1940’s she said whilst waiting for Dad to pick her up to go out dancing. Finished (rather badly) by me in the 1970’s.  It was my first embroidery project and my stitching  and choice of colours was poor but I did not have the heart to throw it away as I remember Mum’s patience with me as I clumsily finished her work. The challenge with the drawing was to make it look like stitching.

From Judith: The oilcloth on my kitchen table. I’m getting used to my Christmas present inktense pencils, colour changes quite a bit when wet! Took ages but therapeutic.

From Joyce: I’ve taken a rubbing from a crocheted tablecloth made by my Mum. 

She crocheted one medallion on her journey to work from Farnworth to Bolton in the war. There are 144medallions. She then joined them together with crochet.

The embroidery is from a tablecloth made by my mother-in-law, sadly no-one in the family knows anything more about it.

From Michelle:  here's my crazy tablecloth design 

From Sue: I got up this morning & felt the need to tweak & tidy the scruffier parts to this crocheted piece. It was so complicated - looked like I’d had one too many!

Here it is once more - could do better I’d say! Joyce’s idea to do a rubbing was more sensible!

From Janet: Here is my contribution chosen for the challenge of drawing checks. A present from my friend Myra more than 40 years ago.

From Mags: Despite my mum being a very keen embroiderer ( or because she's rather be stitching something more interesting) all the tablecloths and napkins in our family were always seersucker ( no ironing required !!) I have however been buying linen tablecloths for quite a while, some of which I've overdyed with indigo. I raided my stash ( which is not small ) and tested out rubbings with coloured crayons on abaca tissue - the cutwork/ drawnwork examples worked best and I like how the rubbing picks up the texture of the linen itself . I love the variation in stitches on the huge embroidered cloth but the thought of trying to draw even a small section of it was too daunting. I can't imagine how long it took to sew.

From Najlaa: The cloth is perhaps Indonesian.

Today's theme is CHAIRS. Do join in!

Some links to online collections (slightly leaning towards ones I've visited in past travels)

* You'll have your favourite museum(s) that we've visited. Here are some more, to get us started on the international circuit. Some I follow on Instagram, others are totally unexplored. 

https://www.metmuseum.org/  - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY - their online Timeline of Art is quite famous, and there are virtual guides and exhibitions online, as well as the collections themselves. They have a hashtag on IG for drawings made from their collections, #MetSketch -

https://asianart.org/ - San Francisco Asian Art Museum; http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/visit/asian-art-museum Seattle Asian Art Museum (been there!)

https://moa.ubc.ca/  - Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver (built shortly after I moved to UK)

https://www.moma.org/audio/ - something to listen to as you draw, stitch, whatever - from the Museum of Modern Art, NY (https://www.moma.org) 

I've always wanted to go to the Smithsonian (Washington DC), and am amazed that it's actually 19 museums! https://www.si.edu/museums It includes an Air and Space museum which has two branches - https://www.si.edu/museums/air-and-space-museum-udvar-hazy-center

https://www.si.edu/museums/air-and-space-museum  

One of my favourite museums in Cologne is the museum of medieval religious art -  https://www.museum-schnuetgen.de/Home-en   - a nice little archive of past exhibitions, and different ways to discover the collection - https://www.museum-schnuetgen.de/Ways-to-discover-the-collection

There are a few museums in Berlin to look round - https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/all-places-at-a-glance.html - one of my favourites is their version of the V&A - https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/kunstgewerbemuseum/home.html - and the museum of European Cultures was pretty good - https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/museum-europaeischer-kulturen/home.html

Drawing Tuesday - Petrie Museum

This fine fellow caught my eye - a wooden statue of Horus (wearing the double crown of Egypt), with some of his gilding and a beady black eye. The muddle around his legs is thought to be part of the linen wrappings. 

But first I messed about with other artefacts from 30th dynasty (Ptolomeic) Saqqara - and ran out of time for finishing Horus....

Judith collected some pots, in outline, and went on to a larger collection of pots, but ran out of time with that and is taking it home to finish...

Najlaa focussed on some faience fragments "with depictions of Nile marsh plants and birds", about 1350 BC -

Jo got out an "old" brushpen and put it to good use, sometimes in combination with a roller pen -

 Carol now has a collection of shabti at her bidding -

 Janet B's humanoid pots ...

... and pot-buried skeleton -

Janet K too chose various types of pots, whether for their individuality -

 ... or for paying attention to their relation to each other in the display -

 Mags revisited some favourite pots -

Her careful and delicate drawing is hard to see on screen - this detail has been edited (on my phone) to add more light and "pop", but doesn't serve the purpose either -

(Paleness is a problem I often have with my own work - too tentative! - and despite reminders-to-self  along the lines of "Be bold! It's only a drawing for heaven's sake!" it's a hard one to tackle. Perhaps what's needed is to carry only pen-and-ink? The very thought makes me quiver with terror! But hey, "it's only a drawing"....)

Extracurricular activities

Carol couldn't resist cutting up one of those ikea scarf/tie holders and adding "a bit" of layered and interwoven yarn, and a few beads ... voila, a new addition for the Christmas tree! -

 We are keeping an eye on the growth of Mags' train stitching....

Thanks to Najlaa for bringing a 2014 issue of Morley Magazine, in which I appear among the prizewinners - centre front! -

DrawingTuesday - Museum of London

Many things caught my eye as I gathered a collection of objects on my sketchbook pages, such as these early medieval jewels -

Copper brooch with polished garnets and fine gold wirework

Finely worked ring

 The folding spectacle frame could be used to double up the lenses for use as a magnifying glass -

 And the wonderful "Dolls of the Vegetable Kingdom" display -

My drawings were a bit hasty and rough, but filled two pages. I was collecting "easily embroidered motifs" for another project -

It scrubbed up well, though -

We met in the downstairs cafe, as usual, but this time the lighting proved rather problematic. The moving, changing display is hard to keep up with! Apologies for the photographic results.

Janet K got her pots in a row

Sue works in notebooks of various sizes

Janet B's old car has undeniable personality!

Carol's close attention to detail and dimensionality

Mags revisited pots she'd drawn on a previous visit

Judith studied the metalwork on the Selfridges Lift

 Extracurricular activities

Carol encountered an interesting project, in Norwich Cathedral, based on donated scarves. The scarves, knitted by volunteers, were to be auctioned off in aid of St Martins Charity for the Homeless -

She also studied some fall foliage -

 Mag is well into the latest panel of her train stitching -

 Sue had been busy while away at the seaside -

Drawing Tuesday - Maritime Museum

My small pencil case contained a gold pencil crayon, and I found something golden to draw - Prince Frederick's barge, designed by William Kent in 1731, with carvings by John Marshall. The dolphins look rather like dragons of the sea -

I was intrigued by the pattern of the scales, both in terms of placement and tone (illicit touching had rubbed off some of the gilding) -

The illustration in the display got the scales -

 ... but I struggled -

Once I'd warmed up with the Golden Porpoise, the front-on drawing took moments and to my eye at least looks more lively.

Jo was on the other side of the barge, drawing the porpoise there -

 Janet B stopped by, on early departure, with Percy the Penguin -

 Mags had been drawing Captain Scott's Antarctic shoes, first in pencil -

 then, concentrating more on the lines, in felt pen -

 Carol was among the figureheads, with those from HMS Ajax and HMS Bulldog -

Sue got involved in the detailed carving of a prow of a model of a Maori war canoe -

 while Janet K found a model of a Solomon Islands topuke outrigger canoe with crab-claw sail -

 as well as other objects from Oceania -

Technique of the week

Jo had been to a class in which the tutor explained about holding a pencil - not as if you were going to write, but thus -

This leads to a very different kind of line, sweeping and curved and tonal. (Try it!)

 Extracurricular activities

Carol felted a pumpkin for her grandson -

Sue recorded the emphemeral colour of "fiery leaves", which disappeared when the leaves curled up quickly -

Mags had been to a Contemporary Quilt workshop led by Helen Parrott, which resulted in a new piece of train stitching, "100 or thereabouts horse chestnuts" -

 ... and also to a workshop with Matthew Harris, which involved painting cardboard and stitching cloth to it (as you do...) -