Lexington grey fountain pen and water-brush, white Gelly Roll pen, white gouache, on coloured paper,  A5 – 10 minutes line drawing at the museum, and 30 minutes adding the light and shade at home

A small fraction of the 2,000 votive figures excavated from the open air temple of Ayia Irini in Cyprus in the 1930s. Half of the statues are on display at the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm (where we saw them, and where you can eat a lovely lunch in amongst the display cases) while the other half are at the Lefkosia Museum in Cyprus. They’ve been arranged in the way they would have stood originally, in concentric semi-circles, all facing a sacred stone. The huge range of faces and expressions makes them a gift for sketching, I kept spotting people I recognised in the crowd!

The Stockholm half of the collection…

…and the Cypriot half.

The crowd of statues reminded me of Antony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isles’

Later the same day I sketched these shop dummies. The way they all faced the same way, wearing uniform clothing, with blank eyeless expressions echoed and contrasted with the ancient Cypriot figures; I’ve no idea what they’re worshipping.

Lexington grey fountain pen and water-brush, gouache, white Gelly Roll pen, A6 – 15 minutes