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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Eros

Checking maps in Picadilly. A6 sketchbook © Sue Pownall 2011

Yesterday in London, having arrived early at our meeting point of Eros in Picadilly I sketched the tourists around me. I was a little concerned by a Spanish lady in woolly hat, thick scarf and hooded coat, as it wasn't that cold. We met at Eros as we wanted to see the Degas exhibition at the RA, but unfortunately as we hadn't prebooked, it was half term, and we chose not to wait the 45minutes+ to get tickets.

People at Eros in A6 sketchbook © Sue Pownall 2011

Instead my friend, the fabulous designer Mary Wright, & I went straight to Tate Modern, via the protestors at St Paul's, to see the Gerhard Richter exhibition Panorama. I was amazed at the mixture of styles from super-realism to abstraction that he uses. I can't confess to liking or understanding all of his work, but I'm very pleased we saw the exhibition. I introduced Mary to my favourite café in the Tate, no sketching as I was too busy chatting & eating, before we explored all the other exhibitions.

Next stop was back across town where we went to the National Portrait Gallery, my favourite, where I saw Marc Quinn's Blood Portrait for the first time. Something else I'm not sure about, but it is certainly intriguing. Unfortunately, we were at cultural overload by the top floors, so we went to another of my favourite cafés The Café in the Crypt.

Finally, here is a photo of a happy customer with her edition of Cuban Scenes, which had arrived in the post that day.

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Fabulous day in London

Yesterday I went to London to meet some old-friends from Plymouth College of Art & Design. The 4 of us last met 25 years ago... I feel so old! We had a fabulous, albeit slight boozy afternoon, both catching up and talking about our distant past. The sketchbook stayed firmly in the bag apart to complain about the moly's paper. However, I had been busy in the morning.

I got to London early in order to visit the BP Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery. Whilst I appreciate the technical brilliance of producing a portrait that looks like a photo, I can't really see the point, and there were several of the entries in a photographic style. The winner's portrait reminded me of Lucian Freud with the colour palette she used, but I found the subject matter rather grim (her dead mother). Nevertheless, I loved the exhibition and as the NPG is one of my favourite galleries I'd recommend it to anyone visiting London.

Café in the Crypt

Prior to entering, I had breakfast in one of my favourite cafés, Café in the Crypt, which is below St Martins in the Field church. Whilst drinking my tea and eating a pastry I did the 2 sketches at the top of this post, abandonning the first one of the column when I realised I'd copied the date too far to the right. The second sketch is of one of the many tombstones that line the floor: my legs were crossed as I hate to stand on them. One day I'd like to attempt to draw the whole vaulted ceiling.

Viewing Turners

After a quick wander around the contemporary rooms of the NPG, I went next door to the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing to see the exhibition Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries, which was interesting, but had a lot to read with all the copies of x-rays and things next to the paintings, along with explanations of what had been altered etc. Moving into the main gallery, I stopped on a comfy couch and sketched the people viewing the Turners'.

Our mini-reunion was taking place in a pub near Baker Street, so I headed over early and wandered into Regent's Park. I am totally flower obsessed this summer, so took lots of photos. I then sat on a bench to sketch the Canadian geese, but it started to rain, so I found another bench under a tree and drew the trunk of a magnificent Chestnut tree. Do you like the inquisitive passer by?

Why aren't you drawing me?

Flowers in Regent's Park