Study Scribbles

I normally scribble my daily life in my sketchbooks but sometimes I use them for research and study. These sketches above are from the current Ice Age Art exhibition at The British Museum, showing some female figurines, a mammoth spear thrower and various carved patterns that may be derived from entoptic phenomena, or images that are seen when the eyes are closed, sometimes under the influence of trance or hallucinogenic substances. Richard Rudgely‘s book discusses this sort of imagery in Stone Age art at length.

I love Assyrian art and always visit that section in the British Museum. Their carvings and sculptures are very detailed and I sketched some decorative motifs (above) and these giant talons (below), part of a complex man/beast. The Assyrians were creating these hybrid creatures centuries before the more famous Egyptian examples.