mOO in progress...

I've been very busy since I got my new studio desk so I thought I'd update with some work in progress pictures!

This is the Bridge of Sighs. No, not the one in Venice, but the one in Cambridge spanning the Cam inside St Johns College. Apparently there's loads of Bridges of Sighs all over the world....  

There is also one in Oxford, and apparently in Peru, and I'm pretty sure I saw one in Glasgow on the route over into the Necropolis!

Spot the Punt...?

You can probably get a pretty good idea of my artistic process from these pictures.

 Basically I visit the building, take a lot of photographs and decide on the best angle and any features I would like to emphasize.

Then I sketch out the basic shape in pencil, bending the building as I go. 

Next I fill in all the detail in black ink waterproof pen. (The pen stage is the one that takes AGES especially if like in the example above I decide to draw EVERY SINGLE LEAF! What was I thinking?)

Then if I'm feeling colourful I watercolour carefully over the ink drawing!

Here is a quick snapshot of a commission I'm working on...

And finally...
A slightly romantic view of Ely Cathedral.

I've visited Ely a few times but I do hold a soft spot for the cathedral since I went on Valentines Day this year to their free entry to the Stained Glass Museum event. I've heard another highlight is the tour up to the roof where the view across the fens is apparently spectacular.

The medieval cathedral is most notable for it's octagonal lantern which replaced an earlier tower that collapsed. It is my general understanding that early cathedrals had a habit of collapsing which is pretty much how the masons learnt over a number of centuries about structural forces and "not to build it again that way"! The current lantern is constructed entirely of wood which was something of a feat of early engineering.

There is also a historical connection to Northumberland in the form of  St Etheldreda.  St Etheldreda had the misfortune to marry a young prince who lived in the wilds of the North East. Sometime later, after presumably having had enough of running around Tyneside in the freezing cold with no coat on, she escaped back to Ely and set up a monastery in the Fens and lived as a nun. Which, lets face it, would probably be anybody's reaction to too many nights on the Bigg Market.

More info for those interested on wikipedia and the cathedral website.