Portsmouth Museum

Recently I took a trip to Portsmouth Museum which has a lot of information about the city's history in general, as well as celebrating achievements of people such as Arthur Conan Doyle (writer of Sherlock) who lived and thrived in Portsmouth.

The trip with my uni class was planned so we could draw in the museum to get used to creating in a public space. But I ended up finding it a lot more useful than that due to its collection of Portsmouth paintings, naval history section and Southsea Castle interactive tour. These are all things that will help me with my current project looking at mermaids in Portsmouth. 

I found older images and maps of Portsmouth to use as inspiration for backgrounds/settings in my own illustrations when I come to create visuals for my narrative. Maps are something I am becoming increasingly more interested in and are more likely to use in my project. I especially enjoyed Jodie Silsby's map of Portsmouth made out of  the area's slang words. 

Southsea castle is a landmark I would like to feature in my work as it is a recognisable historic landmark that would pinpoint the location of my work without having to explain too much. Finding images in the museum of what the castle used to look like throughout history was very useful for this as I could make studies of it at different time periods. This is also useful for me to practice drawing scenery as I need to improve for my work to be at the standard I would like it for my final outcome.