Thrown in at the deep end

Project 1: CABINET OF CURIOSITY

Theme: Structure

The brief was to look at Cabinets of Curiosity which was one of the very first forms of collecting. It started in the Victorian Era, and has carried through to present day as people continue to collect things that fascinate them and be fascinated by things that other people collect.

Frederick John Horniman, Henry Wellcome and John Soane are all brilliant examples of Victorian Collectors whose collections are still in use today. 

To get us started on our projects we went to The Grant Museum of Zoology. We were challenged to sketch with a range of different materials and do each sketch in 5 minutes or under. The idea was to look at the objects  in terms of structure and try and portray it quickly. I hated this. I have serious issues with quick drawings, because they never look finished, there's no time for detail and half the time you can't even tell what they are.

We then did the same thing the next week at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 The mummified foot is my favourite sketch. By this point i was getting slightly more comfortable with working quickly. Weirdly the less i worried about the outcome the more i started to like them. They aren't perfect but i think they're more interesting to look at that a precise and detailed sketch.