Sketching in The Beaney, Canterbury

While my car was being serviced yesterday I spent a few hours exploring the recently reopened The Beaney or, to give it its full title, The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge.

The current main exhibition at The Beaney is work by Henry Moore but on the ground floor I discovered the amazing paintings of Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803 - 1902). He was still painting at 99 years of age and his unfinished 'Sheep in Snow' showed the squaring up pencil marks under the layers of paint. His speciality, which made him a wealthy man, was paintings of cattle.

Next to Cooper's last painting was a sculpture, 'Lamb' by Susan O'Byrne, which I made a pencil sketch of. If you're ever in Canterbury look in at The Beaney. The staff are very friendly too.

From memory: Alex Katz's 'Beach' collage

Alex Katz's tiny and delightful collage 'Beach' (1956) is included in the Turner Contemporary exhibition 'Give me tomorrow' on until 13 January 2013. Some of his larger paintings such as Islesboro Ferry Slip (1976) and Round Hill (1977) are excellent but there are many puzzling and cheesy aspects to his work.
Recreated from memory (and a few notes) in Photoshop.

Chiles blathering on

ITV frontman Adrian Chiles shows how not to keep a nation interested in a football match doomed to be called off.

Pundits

Sketchbook page: Punditry assortment.

Doodle: drummer boy

Sketchbook doodle with Lamy pen and colour pencils; background colour added in Photoshop.

Plume-de-ma-tante moth

 
Hysteria non-scriptus Usually in flight during August, early doors to early dawn. These moths can be a nuisance in the home, leaving inky writing over walls and ceilings. Particularly messy when squished.

Originally posted on my old miketoons.blogspot.

Doodle: Leisured class

Sketchbook doodle using Lamy fountain pen. Colour added in Photoshop.

Doodle: Hoodie with drink

Lamy fountain pen. Plus colour felt-tip pen and colour pencil.

Prague Castle & St Vitus Cathedral from Petřín Hill

Sketched on a hot sunny day in Prague while sitting in the park near the top of Petřín Hill. I'm sorry I didn't have time to finish this. Must remember to take same sketchbook on next visit.

Simpson and Satie

A music doodle from last year which I may have posted before. The solid blocks came from listening to a rugged symphony by Robert Simpson. The Gauloises-smoking, dog-walking man from nonchalant piano music by Eric Satie.

Doodle/Automatic Writing: Son of Chamber Symphony

Listening to John Adams' Son of Chamber Symphony this afternoon, scribbling away in an automatic writing sort of way. Boustrophedonically.

My word of the day which I hadn't come across before until this morning. I was searching Wikipedia for information about house numbering systems - and when house numbering first started. Most streets in Europe are numbered evens on one side of the street and odds on the other. Boustrophedonic is a rarer and older numbering system going up one side of the street and back down on the opposite side.

It comes from the Greek, meaning "ox turning" or how an ox would plough a field - first one way and then the other. The word is more often applied to ancient writing on tablets of stone.