Drawing Heads - Velaquez and the Prince's Drawing School

Drawing a Head: 18 January 2007
pencil and coloured pencil
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

My drawing class at the Prince's Drawing School (Drawing a Head") resumed tonight. I got there rather late as I was at the National Gallery this afternoon seeing the Velaquez exhibition before it finished on Sunday. I must avoid going to see exhibitions in the last week - it was PACKED solid and is staying open late each night this week. It was very difficult to get round as a result although pictures could be seen close too with a little manoeuvring - it just took much much longer than usual.

Anyway, I went from drawing The Water Seller of Seville and Pope Innocent X (from about 15 feet away with at least half a dozen people in-between me and the picture - it was sometimes a lot more!) to drawing a model in the class. She was sat on a dais hence I'm looking up at her. It was rather nice to actually be able to see the model all the time!



[UPDATE: For all those who like to draw and paint heads, there's an excellent couple of blog posts by Julian Merrow Smith (Postcard from Provence) and his wife Ruth Phillips (Meanwhile her in France.....) about Julian painting Ruth's portrait.......and her take on the experience - both are very educational and also entertaining!]

Note (in the wee small hours of the 19th): I've been having frightful problems this morning and again tonight trying to get Blogger to upload pictures to blog posts. I've got my fingers crossed the problem is now solved.

I'll also be blogging about Velaquez again as part of the John Singer Sargent Project - anybody who wants to take a look at some more paintings by Velaquez should take a look here )

Links:

• National Gallery - Velaquez
• The Athenaeum - Velaquez
• Princes' Drawing School

Technorati tags: art, drawing, drawing class, drawing people, portrait, pencil