Victoria and Albert Pot 1, by Kerry McFall

My second sketch class turned out to be just as marvelous as the first!  I met Marcia Teusink, a lovely young American artist, and the several members of her sketching class on Friday morning at the Victoria and Albert museum.  Outside, the stone walls proudly bear the pock marks from World War II bombing raids, a reminder of what insanity we humans perpetrate.  Inside, the vast treasures of many cultures glisten at every turn and twist of the many hallways and palatial rooms, reminders of what we humans can achieve given the proper focus and understanding of what is truly important.  Wow.  And that was just getting in the doors.

Our task was to find something in the ceramics galleries to sketch, using the very basic technique of imagining the ellipses that could be drawn on the surface and using them to form the shapes, and doing a bit of measuring to be sure the shapes don’t go all wonky… basic, but I hadn’t really quite “gotten it” before.  Now you should see me sitting on my little museum folding chair, holding up my pencil (with a very straight arm), squinting through one eye, and counting off units like a pro!

Pottery Sketch 3, by Kerry McFall

After a couple of hours focusing on different pots, we did a grand finale of one sketch including a bunch of pots, aka “a composition”.  Since the actual arrangement of the pots had already been made by very talented curators, it was pretty much a slam dunk to get a decent composition.  Eventually I hope to do a bit of painting on the original, but for posting here I just fiddled with it a bit in Photoshop.  What fun!

After sketching all morning, Griff and I hiked over to the Kensington park, where we had a glass of wine and a brownie with Peter Pan on the Serpentine canal… Tinkerbell, apparently, resides in California this time of year, and declined to attend.