Birthday catch-up 2 - life drawing

November's birthday experience was to attend a life drawing class with artist Rachel Clark. I travelled down to London by train and spent the night in a hotel near to where Rachel has her studio so that I could be up early and at the studio ready to start.
This experience was full of 'firsts' for me. It was the first time I'd had tuition from a proper artist, the first time I'd worked with charcoal, the first time I'd used an easel and the first time I'd had a live model 'sit' for me. I think I was most nervous about the latter - I wasn't sure what it would be like for either me or the model to have me staring at her naked body and drawing her. I did not need to worry - Rachel made the whole experience really natural and calm - the model was amazing, not a hint of any concern about being naked in front of people and her ease with the situation put me totally at ease too.

We started with some 5 minute drawings then moved to a whole series of 1 minute sketches. On Rachel's instruction the model would move and take up a new position. All the while we were drawing Rachel moved round the room helping us (there were about 6 other artists there). We then went back to 5 minute drawings which now seemed really long in comparison. Before lunch we had a 20 minute pose to draw in more detail.
Lunch was a wander over to Tescos with some of the other artists to buy a sandwich then it was back to work in the studio.
In the afternoon we did a much longer pose with the model seated. I found that I much prefered the short sketches when working with charcoal and surprisingly was not as happy with my longer pieces of work.

Time flew past - being absorbed in the drawing with lovely calming music on in the background. No-one was judgemental about anyone's work and I began to relax and not worry about doing my best drawing but instead tried to be a bit more uninhibited - I soon realised that my less careful work produced better results than trying to be perfect and get every line in the right place. Rachel did say that the day was not about producing a finished piece but that it was about learning new technique and trying new things. She said that there was a good chance we would not like anything that we drew and not to worry if that was the case. I certainly wasn't happy with my longer drawings but I'm quite pleased with some of the short sketches I managed to do. Here is a selection of the work I did, the first, a one minute sketch is probably my favourite...

I don't think I'd score my work that highly out of 10, but the whole experience of a life drawing class I'd give 10/10 to. I'd definitely reccommend one of Rachel's classes to both novice and experienced artists. Her website is here.

Birthday catchup 1 - Egypt

This has to have been the most amazing birthday experience of them all (at least so far!). We have such fond memories of our trip to Egypt and we saddened to see the unrest in Tahir Square where only a few months ago we had crossed to go to the Cairo Museum...

We flew business class on BA to Cairo where we had a beautiful suite at the four seasons. We spent our first day swimming, reading and acclimatising to the 35 degree (C) heat which coming from Scotland we are really not used to.
This is  the view of the pool from our hotel window...

The following day we met our guide Salwa...
... who took us on a tour of all of the antiquities of the Cairo Museum (no photos allowed), including the actual bodies of the Pharaohs and all of Tutenkhamun's treasures. We went to the grand bazaar which was beautiful and had lunch in an old Egyptian restaurant.

 Next we went up to the citadel and saw the Mohammed Ali Mosque.

The next day it was down to Saqquara (Old Memphis) to see the huge statue of Ramses...

We then went to the step pyramid...

Then she took us to a carpet factory where we saw all sorts of rugs and carpets being made...

...and then to the pyramids at
Giza and the Sphinx - all quite amazing!!

We had lunch in a hotel overshadowed by the great pyramid then some souvenir shopping. In the evening we went to a restaurant called Kababji where we had Egyptian food cooked on a briazier at our table...
The next day we flew down to Luxor and met up with our cruise boat 'Sunboat III' which was even better than we had imagined. We had the Royal cabin at the front of the boat which was really lovely...and huge compared to the other cabins!

Our boat...

Our cabin...

Our first excursion was a big one, we took a small ferry across to the other side of the Nile where we went first of all to see the Colossi of Memnon...

Next we went to see the Valley of the Queens where we went into three of the queen's tombs - sadly we weren't able to take pictures in the Valley of the Queens. We then went to an alabaster factory where workers told us about the different types of alabaster and demonstrated how it is shaped. I bought a little alabaster cat.

We then went to the Valley of the Kings which really was amazing - again we couldn't take photos but I don't think I'll ever forget seeing Tutenkhamun's tomb or going into the long deep tombs which were beautifully decorated with heiroglyphs depicting the book of the dead.

The final visit of the day was to Queen Hapshetsut's temple. By this time it was the end of the tourist day and the temple was really quiet...

The funniest part of this temple was when the tourist policemen asked Jonathan if he wanted his picture taken holding a gun...he politely declined!

We returned to the boat and had the first of many dinners aboard 'Sunboat III' - the food was amazing!

The next day we 'set sail', first heading North up the Nile, to head back South a couple of days later. We cruised for the next few days and visited temples and villages along the way...Dendera at Abydos, Esna, Karnak, Luxor, Kom Ombo, Temple of Hathor. We also spent time just cruising down the Nile and this was probably my favourite part, watching the river banks go by, waving to local children and soaking up the sunshine on our private deck. I loved seeing all of the temples though by the end of the week we did feel a bit templed out.

The 'whirling dervish' show. 

 (the manager of the boat - on Galabaya night)

We eventually made it down to Aswan where we saw the Aswan Dam, visited the island temple of philae and went on a felucca ride around Elephantine island.

One evening in Aswan our Guide Tamer took me on a tour of the local marker where I did some spice shopping...

After a week on board we finally had to bid farewell to Sunboat III and all the wonderful staff who had looked after us so well. We then caught a flight from Aswan down to Abu Simbel where we saw the iconic temple of Abu Simbel - it really was breathtaking. There was no photography permitted inside which was a shame since the carving inside the temple was some of the most beautiful we had seen out of the many temples we visited.

After Abu Simbel we flew back to  Cairo. We had another night at the Four Seasons - this time in a HUGE suite with sitting room, dining room, master bedroom two bathrooms and views of the Cairo Zoo. We had another trip to El Kebabji for our last serving of hummus, baba gonoush and grilled meat - then an early morning BA flight back home.

I've only been able to post a few of the photos we took and have left out many of the wonderful details of things we saw and people we met. The luxury we experienced and the sights we saw made this a once in a lifetime trip - so I'm giving this birthday experience 20/10!!!