Our Visit to the RAF Museum

On 15 March 2022 seven artists made their way to Colindale and onwards to the RAF Museum. It was a beautiful early Spring day, not too cold with glorious sunshine. Colindale proved to be a major redevelopment area with lots of new high rise flats, complete with the usual gym and Costa. The bus or a brisk walk from the station took us to the RAF Museum, which occupies several modern hangars plus a large and largely empty car park.

There were not too many visitors but there were parties of primary school children in 'hi vis' being marshalled round the site. They enjoyed the specially plane shaped equipment in the play ground.

There was no map available of the rather large site but we hung on through the hangars to find suitable scenes to sketch. There were some tiny planes that only one person could sit in and some huge science fiction flying machines that certainly struck fear into your organiser.

One artist used to work at the Museum as an intern in the Art Department many years ago and so was able to describe what the museum used to be like.

The site was very impressive with lots to draw and learn. We had lunch outdoors in the cafe in warm sunshine and shared drawing tips, as well as drawing!!

Sue Lees

Audrey Rapier

Gill Steiner

Pam Rigden

Janet Payne

Janet Perkins

And a photo of a seaplane which features in Janet Payne's and Audrey Rapier's drawings above

Audrey Rapier has submitted a pic from our visit to the Museum of the Order of St John.

Almost never too late to submit a pic