Charing Cross Station Decoration and Information On The National Gallery

 Charing Cross station in central London has the best decoration and information panels I've seen in London, in fact anywhere in the world. Near the station are London's National Gallery of art and the National Portrait Gallery.

If you are visiting either gallery, and, indeed, if you are not, make time to stop and read about both of them from the information on Charing Cross underground station.

I was interested to learn how holes were used to copy pictures. Our first thought was that you copied the picture's main feature such as a face or body or house, same size on see-through paper, moved the tracing paper over the sketch paper or canvas, then pricked holes around the silhouette, then treated the holes like a stencil and used the tip of a pencil to make a mark through the hole. 

This could also be a way to copy photos onto drawing paper to do a sketch or water colour. However in medieval or Renaissance times the medium would have been oil colour or if you were important, grand murals on the interior walls of churches. 

The Romans and others had decorated homes previously with murals. The exteriors off buildings are still painted today in some parts of Europe such as German.

Nowadays we have murals on the outsides of buildings in: London, England; Banksy in Britain, and the USA; murals in Philadephia, USA; plus graffiti worldwide.

But back to the system of copying. Read more on the National Gallery website.

The National Portrait Gallery displays oil paintings, photos, caricatures and sculptures or people such as Shakespeare, the royal family, the Brontes, Churchill, and many more characters from history, science and the arts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_and_Child_with_St_Anne_and_St_John_the_Baptist

Pricking holes to copy a picture

http://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/portraiture/perspective-seeing-where-you-stand/drawing.php

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher, author, speaker.