The 1st July this year was a lovely sunny day in an amazing oasis of calm and beauty. We went out to the Bishop Palace Gardens in Norwich. I concentrated on drawing Bishop Salmon's Porch, a last remaining portion of a mediaeval stone and flint-rubble-built ruin.
My second drawing took in some more of the surroundings...
Personally, I like the second drawing best but the feedback from the others was interesting. They preferred the care taken over the accuracy in the first drawing. The first drawing is definitely more about the building where the second is more about the setting and less care was taken over the details.
I have not had the time or opportunity to join them once again until this week. After meeting at a centrally placed coffee shop, the decision was made to go to Upper St. Giles. This is a small mediaeval street near a region of Norwich know as 'The Lanes', leading to one of the largest churches in Norwich. St. Giles Church, has the second tallest tower for a church in Norwich.
Again I have made two drawings. Each took about 30 minutes. I do feel out of practice and I would prefer the confidence to be more accurate and less 'sketchy' (scribbly) with my drawings. However, I am pleased with the results. The Church is in fact, my second drawing.
The first drawing of the morning was this one, below, of a street called 'Cow Hill', viewed from the church yard. I was looking for examples of 'vernacular architecture', that is architecture built to a local tradition and of local materials but not necessarily to a set design...
What I noticed here, what caught my attetion, was the repeated pitched roofs, rather like dormer windows. What was intriguing perhaps does not come through in the drawing so clearly. The first three, from the right-hand-side are very regularly placed, as if recently built or renovated.
However, the first three pitches, from the left-hand-side, are somewhat irregularly spaced. The windows are even less evenly spaced, even the sills are not all level with each other. I wondered if this was a late-mediaeval/early-modern timber framed building which has perhaps been extended with the new-build designed to blend in.
