Sketches From Another Continent

Back from an awesome holiday in Toronto and New York, above are a collection of sketches from museums visited in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Probably a good gauge of what my brain looks like when trying to come up with ideas.

An account of what we got up to can be seen on Jen Collins' blog here.

I've been enjoying scouring museums of late looking for inspiration and I've found a fair bit. I feel I'm on the cusp of a few nice ideas that I want to take further and maybe screen print or just turn into detailed Indian ink drawings.

The pictures in this blog are a selection of some of the sketches from the past few weeks. Visits include Edinburgh City Art Centre, Edinburgh National Museum (for the third time this year), the World Museum and the Walker Art Gallery (the latter two are in Liverpool). Also with trips to finally see the McManus (Dundee) properly planned and a jaunt to London for a concert there's surely to be a few more sketchbook pages scrawled upon before the end of June. I've finally set myself the goal of sorting out and opening my online shop for the end of July at the latest.

Fierce Head o' Hair

Short Arse

Pagan carving on an early christian relic (I added the text though)

Hellhound

'Drink driving 'carving, early attempt at Humour

Collection of drawings from Pictish stones

Greek Lion

Greek Cockerel

Ba, the Egyptian representation of personality and Nut, Goddess of the sky

Elu Mask, Nigerian

More sketches (and hopefully more prints) to come soon.

JAB

And Then it Rained.

Last week after a few lazy days of not being very productive (again), I decided to take a day trip to Edinburgh in order to try and be more inspired to do some more drawing. As you can see from below it was a rather productive trip but as you can also see I'm still afraid of taking any coloured pencils/pens/paints with me anywhere when I'm doing any sketchbook work.

Well, I decided I fancied looking through the City Art Gallery and The National Museum of Scotland followed by a jaunt up Arthur's Seat for some nice views of the city. However, as is to be expected at this time of year, what started as a gloriously sunny morning in Dundee turned into a pretty wet, wild and windy afternoon in Edinburgh so I never made it up Arthur's Seat and instead dedicated my time to the Museums and Galleries and ended up with a little sketching over a pint of Deuchars in Bobby's Bar (just across the road from The National Museum). Below are my sketchbook pages from my day trip.

(it in fact rained before I started most of these drawings not after)

JAB