Bank Holiday Monday

It was a little cold to sit and draw outside so I parked the car on Fishpool Street in St Albans and drew the old houses.

 This has been a road since Roman times. My mum, who grew up in St Albans remembers when the houses were in poor repair but it has become a very popular (and expensive!) place to live.

Later I had to collect my daughter from work so these are snatched sketches of unsuspecting shoppers in a local supermarket car park

Museum Posters

OCA student Jereme Crow did a brilliant poster for the Natural History Museum http://www.redbubble.com/people/jereme/art/7006660-natural-history-raaagh.
How can I follow that? I was thinking of visiting the outpost Natural History Museum in Tring which is full of stuffed animals and birds, but I need to think differently so I chose the De Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre near St Albans http://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk
I spent a morning there doing some sketches both for the fun of it and to generate some ideas

It's difficult to attract children, particularly teenagers, to small museums. The perception is that they will only be able to look. In my experience my children weren't keen on the idea of visiting a museum but enjoyed themselves when they got there and much of that was down to how much they could touch. I tried to focus on ideas which would make the idea more attractive. The middle plane is a Sea Vixen and it is possible for visitors to sit in the cockpit which I believe would be quite exciting.

Time is tight so I generate a lot of my ideas when I'm walking the dog or cycling to work. This means I don't have as many sketched ideas as I should but I did a few thumbnails;

My idea is to get the viewer to imagine themselves in the museum interacting with the exhibits. Three posters on the same theme, YOU, HERE...

The figure needs to be universal so that anyone could imagine it to be themselves. I was inspired by the child in the cereal advert who has a glow around them and the line they draw around figures at a crime scene on TV (ok that's a bit of a gory comparison)

Idea for Teenagers (13-16yrs) I would need to return to source and make a drawing of the cockpit  that better fits the A3 format for this to work.

For the adult audience

and for 5-9year olds:

I want the lettering orange with a bold black outline like the figure but I can't work out how to get my computer to do that so it looks a bit wishy washy. Maybe this is better?

The lettering needs to be fatter and bolder and more in keeping with the figure. The figure needs to look as though it is wearing more clothes that would appeal to a 5-9 yr old and the plane has got a bit fuzzy through reworking.





St Albans Old Town Hall

One of my snatched evening sketches. The town hall has a nice cafe below and hosts various exhibitions/performances/sales in the rather grand space above. I have a vision of waving grandly to the assembled crowds from the balcony.......

Bat & Ball

I find myself on a Tuesday with some free time between dropping off and collecting various Teenagers. Time to park the car somewhere interesting (where nobody can look over my shoulder) and draw. This lovely narrow building was a pub long before I can remember. It has housed various shops, and is currently a nail parlour. My father taught me to look up when walking through towns to see the heritage above.

Hovis Bakery

Inspired by Urban Sketchers I've been trying to record places that interest me in St Albans. This corner shop is no longer a bakery but still a useful & friendly little shop overlooking a park where I sometimes walk with my dog. It's a little piece of my childhood. My Grandparents used to live around the corner when my mum was a baby. When I was young we walked their dog across the Heath and played on the swings & slide.