Sunday, April 23, 2006

Oxford

Today was the day for our EDM International Oxford sketchcrawl. Sadly, thanks to railway engineering works, there were no trains to Oxford today, and Rick needed the car to get to the London marathon.

Undeterred, I dug out a postcard from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and spent ages drawing it. I mean ages.

It was amazing how much I saw by actually drawing this image. It is the detail of a painting on the inner lid of the coffin of Irterau, daughter of Esamenopet from West Thebes, Egypt. It represents Nut, a protective goddess, with outstretched falcon wings. The coffin dates to 720-650 BC. While drawing it, I became aware of the balance in the patterning and colour, and my imagination had a go at reading the hyroglyphics as I was copying them. They were pretty good artists, our ancestors.

I've also copied below some sketches that I did a week or so ago in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford when I went for my hearing appointment. I meant to go back and do more today, but best laid plans ...


9 Comments:

Blogger Apfelblüte said...

I love the watercolor! To bad about not being able to make it to oxford!

6:39 pm  
Blogger Lin said...

CAROL!! YOU ARE AMAZING! AND SO ARE YOUR SKETCHES!!!! BRAVA for your resourcefulness!!!!

I'll be posting my one sketch - in pencil -- I want to add wc later on ... I have lots of photos -- and I want to work on a few more from our crawl.

THANK YOU for participating!!!!!!!!

9:08 pm  
Blogger Lindsay said...

Wow! How to make lemonaid out of lemons! Too bad about your transportation problems. But your drawings are lovely!

10:21 pm  
Blogger Alanna Beckwith said...

Hey carole,
I love the postcard drawing! Amazing detail. Thanks for commenting on my drawings!

12:26 am  
Blogger marieJ' said...

Love it...but then I love anything Egypt.

Your drawing jogged some fond memories of my visit to Cairo museum last October...spent three days there and managed to see just a small portion of exhibits.

Your interpretation is fantastic and
the colors are just as I remember seeing them there.
Did you use water colors??

12:28 am  
Blogger starrgirl's world said...

these drawings are wonderful - I'm glad things turned out as they did! Seemed like a productive day to me!

4:40 am  
Blogger Carole said...

Thank you all!

MJ - I used studio colour pencils, mixing the colours by overlaying different colours which is why it took *ages*.

8:32 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Carole,
I am a fanatic for Egyptian art and you certainly did it justice! The other sketches are very good, too gosh, I feel privileged to have been able to look at them, thank you! I recently saw the IMAX movie of the Mysteries of the Nile in 3D - it was wonderful.
You are so talented!
Bye for ow,
Connie

9:30 pm  
Blogger Carole said...

Hi Connie,
Thank you!
I hope your assignment is going well.
Carole

3:17 pm  

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