Life Drawing - The ladies

These are all done with Caran D'ache watercolour pencils

from photographs

This one is Cheri Lunghi, the actress, appearing as Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (my fave).

Life Drawing

Here are some famous faces I drew - although you may have to go back in time a little to know who they are

Blackadder (in pencil)

Paul King from the eighties pop group King (in watercolour on the wrong type of paper!)

And Billy Idol (in biro)

Dresses and Weapons

Quite a natural combination in Tudor times and episodes of period drama like Game of Thrones or Musketeers!

Anyway, these are at Hampton Court Palace (as in the last few posts)

These are called Marquette and are full scale mock ups of period costume made from paper, so that the dressmakers can see the style, the way the fabric hangs etc before they commit to cutting the fabric. Modern ones are make from a plasticised paper and are just beautiful.

They include men's and women's models. The two ladies below (seen as foreign royalty by the British natives of the time) were unkindly nicknamed the maypole and the elephant for their difference in stature.

And here at the palace is a room where the decor is entirely formed from collages of weaponry...

muskets (I'm guessing but am happy to be corrected) and daggers and swords

and yet more weapons in picturesque form

Fantastic Ceilings at Hampton Court

There are some amazing ceilings in some of the old buildings in our country and I can't resist taking pictures

 Lovely bit of stone

Beautiful bit of wood

Gorgeous bit of gold

And humongous amounts of half naked people flying all over the place...

There are so many ceilings at Hampton Court with half naked people and cherubs dropping out of them that I can see why you'd want a four poster bed with curtains all round just for self protection!

Mythical Beasts at Hampton Court Palace

As promised, here are some of the statuesque beasts adorning the palace grounds.

Majestic...

fierce...

oddly made from folded paper (how did THAT get in here?)...

legendary...

caught out in the garden...

and heraldic!

Hampton Court Palace

Here's a little taster of Hampton Court Palace (residence of King Henry the Eighth) on a freezing but sunny February day

Its really odd in the courtyard as sounds of Tudor life are broadcast from unknown points around the walls and barrels and they change as you wander about. Fascinating but disorientating.

Lots of guides and guards stand strategically around in grand red coats. They are very friendly and knowledgeable.

That's a grand tour of the outside.

Next time, I'll take you indoors for some fabulous ceilings, grand decor and mythical creatures!!

Happy Valentines Day!

Here's what Valentine's day looks like in our house...

Card from him to me:

(Relevant because of the current knee pains I'm experiencing).

Card from me to him:

(Relevant because he's mad keen on collecting skull memorabilia).

Present from him to me:

(Not because I'm a Lego fiend or have the computer game but because he'd LIKE me to become as entranced by Lego as he is but he does know I'm a Tardis collector).

Present from me to him:

Hand-sewn owl of weirdness with pose-able wired wings and a hint of ginger to it - as the husband likes.

And so this is what love looks like in the Clarke household.

Happy Valentine's day whatever yours looks like.

Harry Potter Scrapbook 2

Here are the remaining pages in the Harry Potter Scrapbook (excluding the ones with family members on cos I don't put them out there in the world).

The Potions Room

Harry and Ron on the train, and Buckbeak in the Forbidden Forest

Diagon Alley with all the shops

And the huge beautiful model of Hogwarts Castle and grounds.

If you want to see the many photos I took around the exhibition, just check out all posts from July 2017.

Harry Potter Scrapbook

Here are some of the photos I took at the Harry Potter Exhibition (see blogs in July for the whole set of photos over various days) put into a scrapbook as a Christmas present for a family member

The yellow discs are the paper press pictures you cab make on the way round.

The Great Hall

with crests and shields from the gift shop decorations

And Dumbledore's office.

KT Tunstall in Black and White

If you know early KT Tunstall songs, you'll recognise these lyrics