Picture of the Day 05.05.18: Geometry Practice

I love Islamic, geometric art and I used to love drawing geometric patterns as a child.  I have had good intentions about drawing, art, crafts, watercolour and learning Islamic watercolours for some time, so today I decided to pick up a pencil and have a go.  If this turns out well, I am hoping that to make I the theme for my Ramadan posts insh’Allah.  What do you think would make a god colour scheme?

Capel Manor Gardens: Hidden Objects and Art

In amongst the animals, formal and hidden gardens and beautiful blooms, Capel Manor Gardens has  ahost of objects, sculpture and art on display.  I enjoyed spotting the art and reading about it.

See also:

Capel Manor Gardens: Autumn Splendour, Holly Mazes and Secret Gardens

Capel Manor Gardens: Animal Adventures
Capel Manor Gardens: Beautiful Blooms in Autumn

Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition

One of Little Lady's GCSE options is photography, so I knew she would be interested in a local photography exhibition by the Natural History Museum's Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  The boys love nature and animals and Gorgeous in particular is a fan of the Natural History Museum.  We also managed to drag along Shutterbug Sister who has a love of photography.

The location was Valentines Mansion which we have visited numerous times before (here and here for a Mad Hatters Tea Party).

The winning entry was the moon and the crow by Gideon Knight and was eye-catching and haunting.  His other photography, centred on wildlife in the local area had the children engrossed.

The winning picture has been turned into a piece of glass art by local artist and resident artist at the mansion, Amanda Seljubac:

We spent a little time at the Mansion playing dress up, exploring the different rooms and playing with some of the games and puzzles that had been left out.

A pleasant afternoon, with a chance to spend some time indoors as the weather gets colder.

Picture of the Day 21.10.17: Stepping Into Art

My phone is always in use for capturing moments with the kids, taking photo's for the blog and now for silly selfies by the kids.  This weekend we found lots of backgrounds to take pictures against whilst out shopping and the kids complied with plenty of silly poses.

Victoria and Albert Museum: Fashion and Style Gallery

The fashion collection gallery at the V&A covers all styles of clothing from the last five hundred years, the museum website describes it as "the largest and most comprehensive collection of dress in the world".

I would have liked to spend a bit more time here, but you really need more than an afternoon to see the whole museum as it is sprawling and there are four floors.  Plus the boys took one look at all the clothing and shoes and started to at as if I was taking them through a torture cell.  They managed to moan at me the whole way through the gallery until we emerged at the end.

The collection is a fascinating gallery of ball gowns, corsets, party dresses and iconic fashion from every decade in the last 100 years.  The dresses from the early 1900's especially were lovely. 

Victoria and Albert Museum: Far East Galleries

Little Lady came to the V&A last year with her school and complained for ages afterwards that she was only allowed to see the Middle East Islamic galleries and that her teacher managed to combine history, maths and every other subject into the trip.  She sneaked into the Japan exhibit and got caught by her teacher and marched backed to the rest of the trip group.  So when hubby took the rest of the kids to check out the half-term activities (building things out of cardboard blocks, which the boys really enjoyed), we take a detour to the Far East galleries.

The Far East galleries cover China, Japan, Korea and nearby areas.

I can't stop laughing at this picture evey time I look at it, it reminds me of someone I know:

Victoria and Albert Museum: Islamic Middle East

I have been meaning to visit the Victoria & Albert museum for years and kept telling Little Lady the two of us would go.  I visited with my school as a teenager and remember two things, the beautiful Mogul jewellery and textiles and getting shouted at for trying to take a rubbing from one of the displays.

As we were already at the Natural History Museum, we decided to cross the road and visit V&A.  Little Lady did moan it was supposed to be just the two of us and not the rest of her annoying family, but I told her you have to take the opportunity when it presents itself.

On entering, we were presented with the foyer and the renaissance gallery on one side.  Hubby got half a glance at the nudes in the renaissance gallery and steered us in the opposite direction, straight towards the Islamic Middle East galleries (also known as the Jameel gallery after the Jameel family).

The gallery includes items from Turkey, India, the Middle East and Central Asia including glass, ceramics, tiles, jewellery and manuscripts.

Oh - and Little Lady got too close to one of the exhibits, she was pointing something out to me and a guard thought she might touch something, we got told off - again :)

Pages from the Quran:

Tiles from Turkey:

Mogul jewellery: