The National Gallery, Death and Drawing

Royal Drawing School Adventures pt. 1

It’s been a while. My dad fell ill unexpectedly just as I was finishing my term at the Royal Drawing School in November, and a week later, he died. I have been experiencing the grief and sadness that comes with losing a parent, but also the humility and gratitude that is just the other side of that, for having known him, and for the other people in my life. Things are feeling brighter and I am happily immersed in my work again.

I want to begin writing here again by documenting my time at the Royal Drawing School. I took the Drawing Intensive 10-week course in the Autumn, and it was everything I had hoped it would be (and it must be said that my hopes were high - I’d been dreaming of this for 4 years). It was intense: I felt as though, between the classes and city life, my brain was receiving about 1000X more information than usual at any given moment. There was something thrilling in that, though.

It would be hard to overstate how much the trip did for me. Not only did I learn so much, but I got to spend time with old friends (like my amazing host, fellow illustrator Jordan Amy Lee) and meet new people (like my new mudlarking buddy, printmaker Rachel Snowdon)!

My weeks were split into 3 classes: Drawing in the National Gallery, Drawing Space and Enduring Images. I have so much to say about each that I am going to make this a 3-part post. For this first one, let’s talk about the National Gallery.

Each class began with a guided tour by the tutor, focussed around a certain artist, time period or movement, for example the early renaissance, rococo and baroque. We were told about the context for each work and certain aspects to look out for when drawing them. The tutor came round throughout the day to guide us.

Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume by Rembrandt

Having all day to draw in the gallery was a real treat as on previous trips to London I had only been able to snatch 10 minutes here and there. I was surprised how quickly the hours went by.

The Dead Christ Mourned ('The Three Maries') by Annibale Carracci

I had considered myself a drawing-in-public veteran, but I have to admit I found the constant flow of visitors pretty disturbing, especially when people would come and talk to me or take photos of my work (with or without asking), or just peer over my shoulder. At least I was able to bond with my classmates over our shared misanthropy.

The Story of Griselda, Part III: Reunion by Master of the Story of Griselda

Speaking of classmates, during the last 10 minutes of each day we would all lay out our drawings and discuss them. It was inspiring to see how someone else could approach the same painting in a way you’d never have thought of and shed a completely different light on it.

An Old Man in an Armchair by Rembrandt

“Copying” a painting sounds dull, but there are many ways to approach it. At first, I was overwhelmed, wanting to faithfully recreate everything, but I soon realised this would be impossible. I had to accept that my drawings would be far from indistinguishable from the paintings, and that that was a good thing. What mattered was to choose certain things to bring out, whether that was the way the light was falling, the flow of the brushstrokes, the compositional structure, the emotion, the grandeur, the feeling of weight, airiness or a million other things.

Tobias and the Archangel Raphael returning with the Fish after Adam Elsheimer. I had some pre-painted paper from another class which I enjoyed using here.

We were limited to dry materials due to the gallery’s policy (although it was sometimes possible to bring a few markers on the sly). If you couldn’t capture the colours exactly, you had to make do with whatever you had on hand, either mixing, simplifying them or transposing them.

Portrait of a Woman and Child by Anthony Van Dyck

For half of the sessions, we were asked to focus on just one painting and make a sustained drawing spanning 5 weeks. I chose Veronese’s Happy Union. I was attracted to the “rhymes” in the composition, the shapes that echo each other, like in the two sets of circling arms and the parallel cupid and dog. I had never worked on one study for so long before, and every time I came back to it I noticed new things. Making mistakes was an important part of that - I can’t tell you how many times I redrew the dog! But with every mistake , I was learning how the space worked, how the lines related to each other, why certain decisions had been made.

Happy Union by Paolo Veronese; some initial sketches trying to understand surface geometry, figure placement, tone and colour.

Sustained drawing from Paolo Veronese’s Happy Union

It was a wonderful experience to get to know one piece deeply, and to keep pushing myself further when I would usually have considered the drawing ‘finished’ hours ago. It seems each painting has an endless amount to tell us if we’ll listen.

That’s all for this time, I hope you enjoyed reading. I’m getting back to my monthly schedule for this Substack, and next month I will continue this little Royal Drawing School series. If there’s anything you want to know about it, let me know! Meanwhile I wish you a happy February.