Not looking

The final challenge I set myself today was to try drawing people, only looking at them, not at the paper. They're not the most beautiful drawings, but they are mostly recognisable as human, so that will do for now!

Fitzwilliam museum

I spent all day today in the Fitzwilliam museum. I wanted to try to capture my theme of curious people and curious objects. I overheard someone saying that they often had groups coming in for talks in the mornings, so I made sure I was there, pencil in hand when the museum opened.

After a while the groups all separated, to wander around the museum, so I drew a few of the rooms and added people as they appeared.

After all that, I needed a tea break, but couldn't resist drawing these two old ladies!

Tonal drawings

We had another tutor on Tuesday, author and illustrator Alexis Deacon and he suggested I try doing some more tonal drawings, starting with the shadow areas and working outwards, until an outline appeared. I drew this guy in the library because he was working at a computer and stayed there for quite a while!

It was a really weird way of working, not having an outline to begin with, but I think it worked ok (apart from his face! I think I needed a sharper point on my pencil!)

I spent the afternoon in the market, trying out this new technique. Unfortunately, people there did not stay still and I found that I just couldn't get them down on perp quickly enough.

So I went to the Fitzwilliam museum. And three hours later...

I feel a bit bad that the horse doesn't have proper legs, but I was so hungry by that point, I had to leave!

That evening I dug out my pot of stag beetle pieces (I knew they'd come in handy!) and drew some of them too!

People

We had a lecture yesterday and I had some free time before it started so I drew some of the people hanging around in the student common room. I think some of them spotted me, but they didn't seem to mind too much!

After our lecture, a few of us went to the public library to draw people. We were all desperate to draw a little (maybe one year old) girl who was having the time of her life throwing a the books on the floor and climbing on the book train in the children's section, but she would not stay still!!

Capturing tourists

It was a lovely sunny day on Sunday so I thought I'd make the most of the crowds of tourists around King's college, unfortunately though, they weren't very cooperative. I had hoped they would stand still and admire the architecture so I could draw them, but all they seemed to want to do is get a good photo, then now onto the next tourist spot. Very frustrating. I managed to get a few really quick sketches done, but I literally had only a few seconds to do each one, so they are not brilliant! I spoke to one of the tutors, Pam on Friday and she said I should try drawing with a single, confident line, rather than a series of sketchy lines until I got it right, so I tried to do that too.

I'm not sure what this guy was doing, he just sat, straddling the wall for a few minutes, so I thought I should draw him and his lovely hat!

The balcony in the museum of archaeology and anthropology is a good place to draw people because you can watch them without them realising... Creepy!!

London day

Last week I went to London to start on my observational drawings. I tried drawing some people on the train and tubes on the way there, but found that quite tricky! Here are some that I don't think we're too terrible! 

I spent a few hours wandering around London and went to a few exhibitions, where I found more people to draw.

Then I went to the natural history museum and had a go at drawing with a brush pen, which I've never used before, but I quite enjoyed how it feels!

Observation and experiment

Our first project "observation and experiment" is all about drawing. We each have to pick a theme and do as much drawing from life as we can squeeze in to six weeks! My project is going to be titled "curiouser and curiouser". This came about by me wanting to improve my people drawing skills and thinking how lucky I was to be in Cambridge where there are lots of tourists who tend to stand still whilst looking at the landmarks! This developed into an idea to draw lost people, then to draw lost objects. When I started to think about the practicalities of this idea I realised I needed to find things to draw indoors as it will be getting cold soon! So instead of only drawing lost objects, I decided to draw things that are out of their natural environment, for example ancient objects in museums, juxtaposed against their modern cases and surroundings. I finally came up with the title "curiouser and curiouser" as I thought the perfect way to combine all of my ideas was to draw curious objects and curious people.