It's been a while since I've been drawing with the Tuesday gang in museums because of travelling up for the British Museum 'Drawing from Collections'. That course being over it was good to reconnect, the venue today being the
National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. I haven't visited since the
'Turner and the Sea 'exhibition - travelling from Faversham changing trains at Gillingham and Woolwich was a bit more of an adventure but actually quite straightforward as I avoided central London. It was good to see the '4th plinth'
ship in the bottle with its sails of African fabrics and I was mesmerised by the sea projection in the
'Voyagers' gallery.
However, having arrived late I was eager to get stuck into some drawing, what to choose??
I loved the figureheads which both Margaret and Joyce were drawing from different angles. But in the end I headed back to the Voyagers gallery as they had some interesting items in the cases , not too badly lit and relatively quiet.
My grandfather on my dad's side was a pattern-maker on the Glasgow shipyards (including the
Queen Mary) before he became a gardener, a love of working with wood he passed on to Dad.
As I've been doing a lot of hand stitching at the moment ( and know the importance of thimbles , my favourite is the
' comfort'), I was fascinated by the
sailmakers tools - the reamer for flat seams(7) but particularly the 'roping palm' (5) .
It proved surprisingly difficult to draw correctly ( I should have stuck with 1 drawing rather than multiple versions). What I really wanted to do was to have it on my hand and feel how it worked!
1 comment:
Wow, that sounds like such a fun trip. And the Museum looks absolutely fascinating. I love your drawings of the roping palm, I think I might have chosen that to draw as well.
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