Notes from the Fitz; China Ladies and a Thoughtful Monkey

Last Thursday I went to Cambridge to meet my good friend Alex but also to get started on the small sketches.

We managed just one hour of drawing but it was well worth it.

The Fitzwilliam has wonderful ceramics galleries which I always visit. I am particularly fond of the early English slipwares, Staffordshire figures, painted Delft and the wonderfully varied animals and birds, owls, bears, lions and tigers.
Nice for starting the quick drawings in the small sketchbook.
I was hoping to catch some of the robust character and delightful oddness of these early works.

Grumpy Queen

I feel a real affinity with them, perhaps because I worked in Stoke on the pottery factories, perhaps because I have always loved the slightly wonky, slightly out of kilter, outside-the-lines sort of art.

        

   

     

        

In Japan I came to realise how much I preferred the woodblock prints where the the colour blocks had not been perfectly registered. How much more life there seemed in these than in the perfectly printed ones.

My favourite is Florence (as in Nightingale).. she is the one I will be taking into a print.