Friday, November 02, 2007

Eating in the Gallery Cafe at Manchester Art Gallery

Gallery Cafe, Manchester Art Gallery
8" x 11", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Yet another one for the interior landscapes and eating themes which run throughout my sketchbooks, blog and website!

This is quite a quick one , done while eating a tuna salad baguette and a flapjack for lunch prior to visiting the exhibition - Art Treasures in Manchester - 150 years on. The cafe is very light and airy and is a very pleasant place to have lunch.

The food and drink in the Cafe is excellent and they are Fair Trade oriented (of which I heartily approve). This is a little twist on the previous emphasis within Manchester on 'free trade' which resulted in the Free Trade Hall - sadly no longer the home of the Halle orchestra and concerts and rebuilt as a hotel!!!

I also did a quick sketch while in the exhibition of a Landseer painting of a bloodhound and a terrier - 'Dignity and Impudence' - otherwise known as Grafton and Scratch to their owner who commissioned the painting. (Guess which was which!) You can see the 'real thing' at the exhibition, in my MAM blog post about it and thereafter at Tate Britain.

Sketch of Landseer's 'Dignity and Impudence'
pen and sepia ink

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The Cafe and Art gallery are situated on Mosley Street and are an extended hop,skip and a jump away from another famous Manchester landmark - the circular Central Library - which is on the other side of the St Peter's Square tram stop. I've spent long hours pouring over historical records for a dissertation in that library!

The Gallery and the Library are both institutions run by Manchester City Council which has its own landmark building in Alfred Waterhouse's Manchester Town Hall which is Grade 1 Listed. One of Waterhouse's other major Gothic revival works is the Victoria and Albert Museum and the two buildings are rather similar.

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6 comments:

  1. So unusual to see an ink sketch without CP here, it is adorable is it's character and loosenesss.
    Can I ask?
    I believe you use handmade sketchbooks filled with HP paper at times...am I right?
    Who makes them for you?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anita - this sketch is in my Moleskine and that and my Daler Rowney black hardback sketchbooks have really excellent paper for pen and ink work using a fine or extra fine nib - very smooth.

    I still haven't settled on a paper to use for making up a portfolio of larger HP paper but it will probably be Arches or Fabriano.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Could I also ask what kind of pen you use for this type of drawing? I find an old fashioned nib and ink bottle a bit messy and cumbersome for sketching in the field, yet pens with a reservoir seem to lack character.

    Thanks, Michael

    ReplyDelete
  4. Michael - the pen is a Pilot G-Tec C4 which produced an exceptionally fine line and rarely 'blobs'. I can get the same sort of line by turning my Rotring Art pen over - but it generally takes a few minutes to get the ink flowing freely in the art pen and these sort of sketches need to be done very fast if they are to be done at all - which is when I always tend to use the Pilot. It was literally done while eating a sandwich.

    You can see a picture of it on my website on the art materials page.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love these interiors that you do Katherine. I just drool with envy over your sketches. Whenever you go out sketching, you must be surrounded by cps!! You are very patient and motivated...
    MD

    ReplyDelete
  6. Marie-Dom - you've made me realise I've never done a post to show my pencil cases!

    I actually sit there with an Art-Bin on the table which containes the pencils and then I tend to have between 6-8 clutched in my left hand - which is pretty much the same way I work when at home.

    ReplyDelete

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