Monday, December 10, 2012

Higgins Armory Museum

Every once in a while I wake up in the morning with a strong urge in wanting to sketch something particular. I’ve had dinosaurs, large mammal skeletons (whales), classic cars and this time around it was Armory. Online searching lead me to a place an hour west from Boston called the Higgins Armory museum - listed as the “only museum in the Western Hemisphere that is solely devoted to arms and armor.” I was excited and quickly headed out.

The free-standing glass and steel frame structure could be spotted from miles away and it was considered to be the first of its type to be built in the United States. The 4 story building was packed with armory from all over the world with a wide selection that was medieval and Renaissance Europe.

The day was a Sunday and their hours were very short so I needed to get all of my armory sketching cravings out of the way in 3 hours.

The 1st two were the two knights that were staged fighting each other. Forced perspective is something I’ve been enjoying recently so I tried a little bit of that here too. 121125_knight1
121125_knight2

Since I had no idea what I was sketching, finding a disassemble figure with descriptions called out really helped me out.
121125_knight3


A large center display on the 3rd floor consisted of two figures on horses jousting each other. This one was a fun sketch looking up and sketching the knight and the horse.
121125_knight_onhorse


Here’s a very decorative figure with colorful fabric clothing.
121125_knight4


3 figures shown here from the left are from the Netherlands, England and Switzerland in the 1600’s. I like how each country had different approaches to aesthetics and functionally.
121125_3Knights


By this time I was starting to get exhausted and started head to the 1st floor and found this huge armor with really scary looking pointy attachments on the feet. 121125_last_knight

And next to the figure was a cute little dog with chain/ plate armor was sketched to wrap up the day. 121125_dog

3 hours exact – I was physically and mentally wiped out but felt really good since all of my armory sketching cravings were accomplished!