Natural History Museum visit?

Um, actually it ended up being the British Museum. Read on…

I was excited about my trip to London today, so I hopped in the car and took my dog to my daughter, then caught the train to Charing Cross, with a view to picking up the underground to get myself to South Kensington. I’ve not been to this part of London for years so I got the earliest train I could so that I could have a walk round this extremely high-end and pretty part of the city. Just as I emerged from the station to head towards Embankment Tube I had a message from Paola, one third of our little Urban Sketching London spin-off group (Suzy being the other), to say that the Natural History Museum’s security staff were on strike for the whole of February, and visitors were advised to avoid the museum. The strike also affected the V&A, and the Science Museum – in other words, all the museums in South Kensington.

We decided to head to the British Museum instead but we had arranged to have some food before sketching at a cute brunch stop in S Ken, so we hurriedly found another eatery as we were all starving, and in need of caffeinating.

We headed off to the back of the BM where the queue was significantly shorter and made our way inside, after a brief hold-up when Suzy had her art pencil case thoroughly frisked by the bag-checker, who was under the misapprehension that her little pot of masking fluid was some sort of nefarious incendiary liquid and the pencil sharpener was a concealed blade.

It was very busy, but we found a bench in a big room facing the Nereid Monument and got to work. It’s great as we all have really different styles, and I would never have tackled something like this had I been on my own, but it was great to draw and chat and share stories and compare artwork.

Suzy and I then did a quick sketch of one of the statues behind us. You can see more of Suzy’s artwork on her YouTube channel but here is my pen and ink drawing, and my muse:

After a brief and extremely restrained visit to Cornelisson’s we wandered in a Covent Garden-ly direction and had a hot chocolate to warm up before going our separate ways. It was a fabulous day, and despite the chilly weather and slightly disjointed start, we all had a really good time.

The next meeting of the Urban Sketchers in mid-February is quite central in the City, but it will be outside so we’ll have to layer up!