My sketchbooks are mainly a record of my daily life and to practice drawing. When I’m visiting galleries and museums I like to study the artwork and make visual and verbal notes. Husb and I visited the Courtauld Gallery this week and saw their amazing exhibition, ‘Making Picasso’, his early art. I’m one of those annoying people who get up really close to see the brushstrokes and try to work out how the artist has done it. This is a scribble of ‘Casagemas In His Coffin‘ from 1901, an after-death portrait of a friend who committed suicide and allegedly the first of Picasso’s sombre Blue Period work. I particularly liked the very loose brushstrokes picking out the details – they look like scribbled lines. He did several versions and I believe the one in this exhibition is in oil on cardboard.
On the right is a quick sketch of the main features of a tiny painting of Mary Magdalene in tempera by Fra Angelico. It’s an exquisite little jewel. It’s an early Renaissance piece, combining a very formal rendering of the drapery with a much more naturalistic approach to the head and hands, which I sketched very quickly. Although the paintings are minute, Fra Angelico has painted them with so much expression – the figure in this painting looks much more angry than in my scribble. The Courtauld is a fantastic gallery and with half price on a Monday, was only £3 each to get in.
scribblah 
I’m so glad you enjoyed the Picasso exhibition 🙂
Wow…I love Picasso’s early work, Blue Period especially, as his work was very figurative. Never got behind Cubism. Did anybody? Love your sketches 🙂
Thank you. The exhibition is fabulous. Cubism was fine as an academic exercise but was too passionless for my liking
I love the Courtauld, and it’s free if you have an Art Fund card (like me) 🙂 I’m always making notes on paintings there, which I can see people find strange…I think they expect you to be copying the work instead of studying it. Silly sausages. I’m hoping to do a double whammy of Manet and Picasso tomorrow, as I was too early for the Picasso on my last visit. Anything else to look out for?
Definitely the Ice Age Art at the British Museum if you can get in. It’s absolutely marvellous. Very good show of oil portraits of native Americans from the 19th century by George Catlin at the National Portrait Gallery – free too.