Drawing Tuesday: Islamic Glass at the V&A

  Drawing Tuesday this week was  in the glass gallery or architecture section of the V&A . I love the glass gallery - I remember  gasping out loud the first time I saw the amazing glass staircase.  The problem was deciding what to draw among all the treasures there  as I was already later arriving than I'd hoped.  So I settled  on a case of  Islamic  glass  ( it's becoming a bit of a  series,  having drawn  examples  at the British Museum)

  I loved the watery nature of the shadows but as shadows do, they kept disappearing and moving !

  It was the variations in colour that attracted me in the first place but I got absorbed in drawing with 4B pencil and using eraser ( current favourite is a Tonbow mono zero, it's like  drawing with  light) . I daren't risk adding any colour having learnt from bitter experience that you can't rub it out  so I  did a very quick colouring-in of my preliminary sketch  with a watersoluble pencil (Caran D'ache Supracolour II Blue 260)

One of the sessions in Advanced Painting course was on  using Photoshop or similar  to  review possibilities  for making changes to your artwork in progress, something I do  frequently for source material, less so for  my own  work. So at home  I did some playing around with Photoshop, seeing what my pencil drawing might have looked like if I'd been brave enough ( and had more time) .  I sampled the blue from my drawing  and then used it  in combination with different 'sketch' filters.

 

Graphic Pen

'Halftone'

The same filter ( 'chalk and charcoal' )applied to the photo (  below)   rather than the drawing ( above)  is far less interesting and dynamic  as there isn't the variety of marks