After a stimulating Kew/NHM networking day at the Natural History Museum on Monday ( 79 'lightening' talks of 2 slides in less than 5 minutes!!), with my head still buzzing, I went over the road to the V&A, finally getting round to see the exhibition of
British drawings. It was a joy to be reminded of the work of Samuel Palmer - the catalogue from the
2005 exhibition was the first thing off my bookshelves when I got home. Besides his 'black works', perhaps because they reminded me of the rubbings of bark I made at Rydal, I particularly liked his drawings of
tree trunks capturing the different textures, obviously enjoying the marks made with his pen.
More impressive marks made by David Connrean in
'Mappa Mundi: drawing to the extent of the body' capturing the evolution of a line as its is copied imperfectly. I've tried something similar and can attest to how absorbing it is as an
exercise but never on this monumental scale where he used his whole body!
A different set of marks again in this charcoal drawing
'Head Study Two' by Alison Lambert, almost sculptural with its patches of paper added and drawn into.
I was also intrigued by the methods of
Jane Dixon - making paintings of photographs, then rubbings of the textured paintings on graph paper with graphite. Thought provoking studies making me wonder how I might take further the ideas I started working through in my
daily art last year.
Despite buying several exhibition catalogues lately, I'm sure I'll be buying
this book soon.
Meanwhile I couldn't resist this colourful kantha scarf in the shop - well it is my birthday next month and I'm currently researching and writing some blog posts on hand stitch for the
'And Then We Set It On Fire' Blog. I'm sure it counts as 'reference material'!
Looks like research to me.
ReplyDelete