Tricia's Flickr Pictures

Here is a link to Tricia's photos on Flickr, some really nice shots of the exhibition and some of the folks that came along.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78122496@N03/sets/72157629639094706/

last Drawing Buddies session for Spontaneous Communities

Had our last drawing buddies session for Spontaneous Communities, sadly, though everyone incredibly keen to find another project to get their teeth into. More lovely detailed drawings of land and water based flora that you might find at the Spontaneous City Sites. This was in lieu of a planned visit to Waterloo park to draw outdoors but the weather is just too unreliable! Welcomed Clare who I hadn't met before but who obviously already loves to draw and has already been welcomed into the group. Whole group is fired up about the forth coming exhibition and keen to come to our tea & cake celebration on 8th May too, it's going to be great !

Butterflies, moths and squashed bugs

The Drawing Buddies had another lovely trip to The Castle Study Centre, this time to draw british (and many Norfolk) butterflies, moths and bugs, also nests and animal architecture but these turned out to be too delicate to get out of their labelled boxes so we have deferred that session until we can see the best examples in the in the natural history galleries. When we first arrived I was worried that some of the drawers were "under whelmed" by the scale of the things that I had asked to look at and I thought we may have to split the session and go over to look at bigger things in the Galleries. However the courageous drawers were not to be defeated and became completely absorbed by the display cabinets full of british butterflies moths & insects some of which where miniscule! and squashed ! I was so impressed with their patience and tenacity and think that the drawings reflect just how involved they were. We followed up on a previous session (when we 'adjusted' each others drawings by drawing on top of them in a different colour, Trevor's inspired suggestion) by making sure we moved around and critiqued of each others work. We were helped by the Leonardo de Vinci quote "we all know that errors are more easily recognised in the works of others than in ones own, so that often whilst criticizing the small errors of others you will overlook your own great faults .........." and we used his trick of showing our drawings to the mirror which produced amazingly instant recognition of 'errors', not that this lot can put a foot wrong in my opinion. The challenge is to make the most of fact that we are a group, and use each other to develop our drawing but also finding enough solitude to be really receptive the subject, somehow it does all happen.

More architectural drawing

Today we went to the Cathedral to follow up on some of the architectural drawing that we began back at base a couple of weeks ago. It is courageous of some of the group to be drawing in public, remembering that several are pretty new to drawing all together. We used view finders to narrow the field a bit and identify and area to study. Even so I think it was still quite challenging, making an attempt on this vast and awe inspiring space, perhaps we should have set narrower parameters and focussed on more close up features. Still there were successes and Sheila was unstoppable, even in the cafe afterwards.

Drawing Buddies at the Castle Museum Study Centre.

The Drawing Buddies went to Norwich Castle Study Centre. Sadly I couldn't go because I got a horrible bug. I think I really missed out, everyone was delighted with the experience, some members of the group had never been before and didn't know about the resource and they were made to feel very welcome and encouraged to come again as a group or individually. Ruth the curator had arranged for several wildlife objects that might be seen at the city centre sites to be available to draw close up and the group were given a room to themselves. I think the drawings they made are beautiful, full of character and convey just how involved they all were. Everyone is keen to go again and I will be joining them this time!

Referencing architecture

The Spontaneous Cities reference the architecture around them so we took a close up look at some features of Norwich Cathedral which could be seen from Cow Tower, if you were a bird in a sculpture, up a tree ! Drawing from cropped, close up photos of architectural features gave us chance to do a little mental warm up ahead of a planned a visit to the real thing in a couple of weeks time. We also did some collaborative group drawings attempting to draw 'as if we were one artist' questioning the subject out loud, externalizing the internal dialogue, guiding each other and rotating ourselves and the drawing. We were against the clock but there was a kind of inherent editing and correction that went hand in hand with the discussion, unruly but fun and I think I got to see the Drawing Buddies as their six year old selves !