I did go back to Whitby Museum on Thursday and spent the whole day sketching and photographing things, concentrating mainly on the extraordinary fossil collection. If you 'click' on the picture of the Museum on the right it will take you to their website, with details of the collections and of the opening times.
The plant fossil is Cladophlebis denticulata which is a very graphic matte black, with the delicacy almost of a watercolour painting across the surface of the stone.
In contrast the photograph of rib cage (below) is just the central section of a large Plesiosaurus Propinquus. It is astonishing to me that such contrasting things can have survived almost intact for an inconceivable period of time. There are so many beautiful patterns and structures in this part of the collection I could spend the whole year of my residency at the museum staring into one cabinet and not get bored but there is so much else to investigate in there.
I am beginning to develop a few ideas and at some point will publish a plan of workshops I will be involved in running inspired by the collections throughout 2009
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