Contemporary Drawing Sketchbook - Data Gathering at Wellcome Collection

On Thursday,  after lunch  in the members room and a quick look round rooms 90,91 at British Museum ( watercolours and ' where the thunderbird lives'),  I headed off to Wellcome Collection for the first session of City Lit Contemporary Drawing Sketchbook  course.

After a discussion on various ways of recording : eg different materials ; collage; continuous line; making notes; we spent an hour each on 2 different activities: drawing 2  commissioned works by contemporary artists ( lots to choose from)  looking at methods used and how they'd interpreted their them and then drawing from exhibition ' Electricity- the spark of life'             

 I first studied the glass interpretation of  the swine flu virus by   Luke Jerram, fascinated by the different qualities of the glass itself but also the shadows and reflection. I could see rings of of papercut  people in the shadows . Intentional, accidental, does it matter?

Then in the  reading room , high up ,difficult to see  easily , 'Sewing Body'  by Alice Anderson  which incorporated personal objects and a needlework figure wrapped in fine copper thread. I used 0.1 pen to work out what was going on in the lines  in contrast to the graphite I'd used for the glass. Note to self - try different materials using same subject.

On her website, found picture of wrapped lightbulb , appropriate for the electricity theme  and also some photographs of her performances. Capturing motion is the main theme that came out of my observations.

 No photos allowed in the electricity exhibition so  had to do a lot of searching for similar model of  fantastic 3d model of electricity consumption assembled from hundreds of daily record cards.

 This led to  all kinds of   wonder in Parametric 3D forms

 Then a study  of  first X-Ray  by Roentgen  and  trying to capture the motion in film on  Cineradiography articulation of limbs

 I was just thinking I could do with a book showing details of hand anatomy  and drawing instruction when  the following  day  I picked up How to Draw Hands Oliver Senior  for £1 in the Fleur Bookshop!

 I've long had a bit of a thing about hands - in Wellcome collection; double hand print ;  and look what's currently under the sewing machine for International Threads .

On Saturday  I met up with some members of CQKent at  Oast Quilters, with an interesting  talk by Mary McIntosh  and today I'm returning to Brunei  Gallery  and then back to Wellcome for some more data gathering  for this Thursday. Housework has been abandoned this week!