Studio notes no. 180

ink drawings, summer poem and sketchbooks

Hello Everyone,

It is very warm - that is all I can say about the current heatwave here in the south of England, a place not equipped for high temperatures… I watched a queen bee saunter by my window yesterday, she was just sailing slowly like a majestic vessel - and my thoughts were: haven’t you got somewhere else to be (bee), delicious flowers to visit? Why be up here in the roof tops of a busy city? Then I remembered it is quite acceptable for a bee to shelter in the shade of a roof, to glide down to earth eventually. She did not seem lethargic. And so I watched her descent with just a little awe….

photo: ink drawing - the Bronte Sisters. I don’t often draw people who are ‘known’ and I certainly did not set out to draw them. They just appeared, or rather I started to recognise them - see my notes before.

I have been working on a new collection of postcard sized ink drawings. These nearly all measure 14cm x 10cm. I would describe these drawings as intuitive - and by this I mean I start to draw not knowing who or what may appear on the paper. My starting point may be a simple curve, or something more exact such as a face. If I begin to see something I recognise, or someone I recognise, then I work with the drawing to see what might develop.

By going with the flow, rather controlling the outcome from the start, enables me to discover a wealth of imaginative possibilities. It also allows a certain amount of freedom. But of course this can be a ‘hit or miss’ process. I work in a similar way when I am stitching, using my sewing machine as a drawing tool. it does cost materials, when that ‘latching on’ doesn’t happen - I know when it’s happening and when it’s time to come back to it. This is something you learn over time, as an intuitive artist. It can be frustrating, yes, but I don’t know any other way of working.

photo: rose tea - an original ink drawing

There are times when I will ‘fall in love’ with the harmony of a drawing as it is made - only to, maybe only moments later, look at it and think: some people might think this is bonkers. I really don’t care, is my response to that. Let people think the drawing is bonkers, if they want to, I tell myself. There are probably many people out there who just won’t ever get my work and that’s ok.

photo: a queen of ancient days - I love to draw and stitch queens who have come from an undiscovered past kingdom, perhaps, never truly known but deeply revered by her people…

When it comes to knowing if a drawing is ‘complete’, or even ‘good’, I just have to trust my experience and gut feeling. I do at times ask my daughter for her opinion because she is honest and will give her opinion thoughtfully. She understands how I work, having grown up watching me at work, but she has her own ideas on composition, light and shade, what makes a picture interesting to the eye etc…

photo: Innocence and Experience… as I worked on this drawing I heard/felt the words, reminding me of Blake’s poetry. This is not an illustration for Blake’s poems but there is an intuitive connection, because when I work I am drawing upon my own memories and interests, all the things I have seen and read, that mean something to me.

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Shop News

The new ink drawings will be available at 7pm today, Sunday 29th June. They are offered at a special price of £20 each.

You are welcome to see all the new collection now - there is a link to my shop at the end of these notes. Thank you.

Future updates:

Wednesday 2nd July - new tiny paintings

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Poetry

A change from my small stories this week - I do not have any new stories to share, so instead have an excerpt from a longer poem. I hope you may enjoy reading.

A Notebook of Summer Remedies (excerpt)

Sit or lay yourself beneath the deadest tree
and let the dead wood sing to thee.

With all the green of summer,
why do we love dead things?
So reverently, I wait for the brittle days
of flowers to be forever and a day.

St John’s Wort in a bright jar,
for your eyes and hands to sparkle again.

A woman might tie her apron strings
until they cracked, just to be pretty enough
that long summer alone,
birds shouting names in shadow-play.

Do not touch the tall delphinium,
they are still aching for the painter’s brush.

All summer, no desire to do anything
but everything at once - to describe each impossible
beauty would be a murder to it all.

Even the broken crone will feel the gristle
of her heart again if she drinks the rose.

But how can we make remedies 
when there are no roses? 
Fetch me a pencil and I will draw you a rose -
another and another, all with eyes and minds
of their own.

Teas and tinctures, made in kid’s buckets,
jars and bottles rusting beneath the sink.

We heal ourselves by stepping onward,
with hairy leaves, dull yellow blooms. 
Ask a ghost-child her brittle secrets -
all are much the same as yours.

Summer Sketchbooks

Here’s a look at some sketchbook pages from past summers - that for me evoke a strong feeling of summer.

photo: sketchbook pages from July 2022

sketchbook pages from 2018 - with poem notes on sparrows: ‘a stutter of shadow - bird in the long afternoon’. There is something special about summer long afternoons in a place where it gets dark at 4 pm for many months of the year.

small book pages from 2016 - although these abstract studies were made in February, they have a summery feel to me

photo: pages from 2019 - lots going on in the garden, cat sensibly asleep indoors, books to read…. This is in a sketchbook filled with paintings rather than quick sketches. I treasure the book because I spent so much time with it.

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photo: bird lovers - an original ink drawing