March Sketch Outing

Our planned sketch outing for 3rd March was cancelled due to a reasonably heavy snowfall.  The venue - Swindon Museum and Art Gallery - is at the top of a steep hill, so even attempting the journey by foot would have been difficult.  In any event, the Gallery decided to close its doors for both the Friday and Saturday.  So, our meet-up was reorganised for today, with at least four new members turning up.

Two or three of the rooms were closed as exhibits were being changed, but there were still plenty of opportunities for sketching.  I ended up in the small Egyptian room on the top floor - the main exhibit being the coffin and mummy of a teenage boy, named Hatemiu. The coffin was discovered near the town of Akhmim, Upper Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile.  It was purchased by an English collector in 1886 who gave it to the Museum in Devizes, Wiltshire - they later sold it to the Swindon Museum.

I was fascinated by the intricately detailed decoration on the mummy and attempted to capture this in my sketch, as well as give an indication of the colours used.

Pen sketch on Hahnemuele Grey paper with Inktense pencils