Giorgio Morandi exhibition

I had a wonderful day out on Saturday.  I started by going to the Giorgio Morandi exhibition at the Catterick Gallery in Highbury & Islington.  Brilliant etchings, done very simply, using tonal value by intensity of lines or cross hatching.  It was the same as one of my drawing styles, but better!  Morandi's use of line was very interesting.  Very carefully drawn, but still with the mark of the hand where some lines had just gone a fraction too far, so it looked hand drawn and not mechanical.  He was drawing in the inter-war and post war years, mostly still life but with some landscapes.  He had toned the backgrounds with linear marks, but covered small areas at a time, not lines across the whole background.  Very, very inspirational.

Then I went to the British Museum, to look at a penny defaced by the Suffragettes, with Votes For Women stamped into it.  This made me think about how stories can be told by objects, as in the BBC radio series, A History of the World in 100 Objects.  This made me come home, dig out an old sketchbook with my drawings of Uncle Les's camera, and look up the story that Aunt Lily told me about Uncle Les and his photography hobby. 

Then I went to meet a friend, Matt, at work and we planned to book the Manet exhibition, but when I went home, it was fully booked.  Still, I had had a very profitable day.