I've been meaning to come up with a scene for the waterfall world I drew and posted here, and I finally got around to it. It's inspired by those mornings when you just can't figure out what to wear.
This month Lane and I headed north to London on a train for a few days to be with visiting family. There I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum. I read here that Robin Preiss Glassner, illustrator of the Fancy Nancy books, gathered a lot of her costume ideas from this museum. They also house the largest collection of original Beatrix Potter illustrations.
It turns out one day is not enough to begin to see this museum. So I stuck to the Beatrix Potter hallway and sketched as much as I could. A couple things I learned from being right up close and personal with Beatrix Potter's illustrations were:
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Her characters have incredible detail- right down to the tiny folds on
their jackets and the little extra hairs on their chins.
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The drawings start really simple- just big shapes in pencil, and then
she would watercolor and add the detail in then (which, if you've ever
tried this is VERY hard!). It looks like she would add the ink line
progressively as she went along.
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Her landscape design is some of the most breathtaking I've ever seen.
You can tell that this is where she began her love of drawing (which you
can read about in her biography). She mixes relatively equal amounts of
curved lines with straights to form the chaos that makes all the leaves
and trees look so natural.
I hope you're enjoying your April wherever you are!
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| The Victoria and Albert Museum, London |
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| My sketches of Beatrix Potter's work in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London |
