Yesterday my fellow Concept Artists and I went to the British Museum in London for our third monthly training session.
Before you start scrolling down I have to break it to you: I didn’t even scribble a stick man.
The mass of tourists was aggressive enough to discourage the most motivated artist.

The rooms were people weren’t punching each other on the face to get a place in front of the artefacts weren’t interesting enough to go fetch a chair and take all the gear outside of my bag, so I eventually gave up.
Plus, damn I’m getting old and my feet were killing me.

Nonetheless the trip was fruitful and illuminating.
I mean, I took 428 reference pictures, I can’t wait to find an excuse to smuggle all the props and objects I found even slightly interesting into Runescape.

The rooms I found most worthy of attention were the Aztec and the African.
I knew little to nothing about ancient South American artefacts, and I was impressed by the power of their designs.
My wife would have gone nuts wih all that lapis lazuli blue everywhere.

Apart from that, I made a mental note to look deeper into meso american ancient art, the way they break down complex scenes into simple shapes is rather unique.
Plus, the gruesome nature of their favourite subject matters (like, Queen Something Something performing the ritual of sticking ten feet of barbed wire through her tongue) never fails to entertain.

African art was just as much a surprise. You can easily see some of the faces of their carvings in Picasso’s paintings. He was almost certainly impressed by their natural skill in simplifying, decomposing and reassembling shapes.
Unfortunately when I got there I had already been in the Museum for close to six hours, so I couldn’t be asked to take my sketchbook out.
I promised to myself to go back and spend a day just in those two rooms, which are luckily neglected by the tourist throng.

by Paolo Puggioni