Sketching at the Haggin Museum

By special arrangement with docent John Carruthers, our senior group met at the Haggin today to have private time to sit and sketch to our hearts content. First we did a quick walk thru the various galleries open to us, and John gave us a little background on a few of the paintings. He asked us to do thumbnail sketches, focusing on the darks and lights. So, that is what I looked for. Then we each took a folding wood chair and found something that appealed to us for sketching. Frances ( who is a sculptor as well as a painter) of course looked for horses. A number of paintings of horses were there, but she was drawn to a sculpture. Down she plopped on her chair and we did not hear a word out of her for almost two hours. She was totally engrossed. Here is a very bad picture of the horse and her sketch. I had the flash off so it did not focus. But, I want to share it anyway.

Jean, Helen, John and Phyllis pretty much concentrated on the many beautiful landscape paintings by Bierdstadt, William Keith, etc. In fact they did quite a few quick sketches of a number of them. They didn't really concentrate on the lights and darks, but the overall compositions. They will probably paint from their sketches later as they really are landscape artists.

I found myself drawn to a priest looking at a globe. Whether it was the circular globe, or the lighting, I'm not sure why it appealed to me. Maybe it was the red robe. Here is the painting and my seat where I sat to draw. Then I moved into another room and was intrigued with the angles and perspective of looking through a hallway into the gallery where Frances was sketching so I drew that. Then I moved into a little area where there was an interesting portrait. Interesting because of the light around the head and shoulders of the subject. Here is the painting and my sketch.

We enjoyed our morning so much. Elizabeth and John took better pictures and will share them later. we plan to do this again in the fall. John and his wife travel a lot, so we will wait until they are back from their adventures. Thanks John, this was a great morning.