An Arty Time

Channelling Monet. Colour planned on site but added later.

On Wednesday, I headed to town with the first stop at the Royal Academy to see the Painting the Garden: Monet to Matisse exhibition. It was the most inspiring exhibition I have seen in a long time and I just want to draw and paint gardens.

Sketched inside the exhibition.

Next stop was at my favourite London gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, where I went from inspiring paintings to amazing photography in the Vogue 100: A hundred years of style.

Arriving early to meet friends and fellow artists, Jean Edwards & Minnie, I took inspiration from the Monet exhibition and sketched the pub focusing on the garden. (top).

After dinner, it was off to the Tower of London. Arriving early I used the 15 minute wait to sketch the Shard. (below)

 We were at the Tower of London for a fabulous evening at #DrawnattheTower with Art Macabre: Ravens and Morbid Corvids. I started off drawing the RavenMaster, who was a fount of knowledge on everything corvid down to the naming of the birds: he was holding Gripp. After a couple of sketches of Gripp, I moved on to the pairs of ravens in their cages. They are only caged at night and roam freely around the Tower during the day. The ravens were very challenging to sketch and moved a lot, my results were not helped by my butterfly brain wating to take photos and chat to the Raven Master: love interesting people. I think my last sketch, drawn on black paper, is the most successful and I have hung it up in the studio. Here it is:

To see the rest please go here to the slideshow

After all that artistic input, I've been very busy drawing and planning prints since coming home. I especially want to get on with my Bourne Mill gardening project. What have you been working on?

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Sketchmeet at the garden centre

Poplar Nurseries. ©Sue Pownall 2016

Yesterday, I arranged a sketchmeet for the Colchester Sketchers at a local garden centre. It was an inspiring afternoon albeit very chilly.

Settling down to sketch.

Trophy shot of scene and sketch.

Sketch 2 a gardeners trolley.

Colchester Sketchers (minus 1) chilly but inspired.

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Monthly challenges

WIP Bourne Mill in winter

There's a new challenge over on twitter led by Anthony Greentree (@antsgreentree) called #buildapril, which is is all about buildings and structures in any media.

Above is my 1st April sketch of my across-the-road neighbours drawn with a Super5 pen with DeAtramentis ink and painted with Winsor & Newton watercolours in A Daler Ebony A5 sketchbook. Whilst right is a work in progress started yesterday of Bourne Mill.

Last month's challenge was #animalmarch, and I started well with daily sketches of my assistant, but then life got in the way. Here are a selection of them:

1st March. Pencil sketch

4th March Digital sketch

8th March. Ink sketch

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