I draw because I need to do something with my hands and drawing is an easy enough nervous habit to adopt. Drawing well - well that’s something else. This is not a judgemental process but about the process. I am talking about just drawing. Just drawing and drawing and making the same drawing over and over. Draw a figure sitting, draw a figure sitting and so on…. And a tree, and a house and here’s another figure sitting.
I dab lino printing ink on to a surface and use my fingers to spread the ink. I don’t use a roller. I believe in fingers and finger marks. I believe in chance marks. I insist on the ink drying a little and test it out and work it about.
I don’t believe in making a drawing once, but I do believe in getting it right in the first take, some times. Or getting it right on the hundredth and then the seventy-seventeenth time. All things are impossible, go with the flow of using lots of paper and remember to recycle. Keep scraps for mopping up ink. Keep tiny fragments of anything that looks vaguely ok-ish. Keep going. Keep going….
In my ‘ideal world’ every day would be a sketchbook day, a day for drawing and making tremendous heaps of marks and papers everywhere. Painting paper for the love of spreading colours, mixing colours on the paper as my brush hurries across bits of this and that. Torn open envelopes and brown paper bags get painted, as if made into relics.
Somehow the mess looks better in black and white.
But eventually, hours later, pages in my sketchbooks somehow get made into something… There’s so many steps and stages in this process, unfathomable. I can’t write you a recipe. You need to be there, making the tea and then making the tea again because I let it go cold
Somehow or other things come together. I move elements about until they work for me. Bringing ideas into light, contrast, a little humour. I don’t know if people get my sense of humour or get it, or am I any good at it. I don’t worry that people take me seriously, only that people think I take myself too seriously. Because really I do not. But enough about me. Here’s another:
Two drawings made in separate sessions, somehow come together in a diptych, of you want to be fancy about it. These are pages in my sketchbooks, my books, so I can be fancy about it:) And laugh at my cutting and sticking - got to put a bird somewhere (spot the birdie).
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A short story (fiction)
The Climber
We pass along the lane, steady in traffic. There are early spring trees, empty sheep fields and a van with bold gold lettering: Cocksure Renewals, I think it says. I wonder what they do, or if it’s one of those vans a friend was telling me about: the kind of van with an obscure ‘undercover name’, used by police to watch people. I laughed at this idea, but you never know.
The bus driver plays with the brakes as we head downhill and I look out at the other side of the road, tree-lined by the park. Ahead of us is a woman walking with purpose, a bulky shopping bag on her shoulder. You should not do that, I want to tell her, it’s bad for you to carry so much weight like that. I exercise my own stiff shoulder and feel it grind.
The woman has stopped walking and is staring up at a tree. Something about her is familiar to me, her shape and colours. She is staring up at the ivy-clad tree as if talking to something. She angles her phone. I imagine she is trying to take a photo of a squirrel, hopeless in low light and squirrels don’t pose.
The bus has stopped in a line of traffic. I look back now to see the woman. She is more than familiar to me. I am convinced she is somehow myself. But now she has put down her bag and is climbing the tree. She drops her phone and continues to climb. I look at the gentleman sitting behind me, who seems to also be looking at the woman. ‘Is she climbing the tree?’ I ask him. ‘Looks like it,’ he says and nods.
She is climbing the tree, without hesitation. She is wearing my green scarf, the exact scarf I knitted last winter. But she cannot be me, she climbs adeptly. I would never do that.
The bus lurches forward. I don’t want us to take the next bend, for the woman and her tree will be out of sight. I am twisted round, trying to get a final look.
‘There, there!’ the man behind me says, pointing to the sky. ‘Look there now!’
She’s flying off into the sky, without a care in the world.
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A sketchbook page from March 2016
A note to say: I am making new mixed media work, especially dolls, but slowly…. Last week I really had to keep my head down and just paint because like everyone else I was in need of deep focus and could not extend into multitasking very well. These are very anxious, guilt-ridden times. Trying my best seems like a small gesture indeed.
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Shop news here. A note to say: I am making new mixed media work, especially dolls, but slowly…. Last week I really had to keep my head down and just paint because like everyone else I was in need of deep focus and could not extend into multitasking very well. Anxious times.
Until next time, please take care. Thank you for reading.
I really look forward to your posts every week, the highlight of my Sunday morning. I sit with my coffee, read your post and it helps me focus on where I want my creativity to take me in the coming days.
I have such a problem with drawing. At some point an art teacher or someone else must have given non-constructive criticism, I can’t remember when exactly, but I know I used to draw all the time and loved it and then suddenly I stopped, completely and utterly, unless I had some homework to do. I stopped thinking of myself as artistic and I decided to study History of Art at University rather than go to art college. Studying drawings by geniuses didn’t help and I gave up drawing completely. Last week I said I was going to start a sketchbook and use it to plan a little embroidery I had to do, I didn’t, I went straight to my needle and threads. I know I just have to set aside time and make myself sit down with a sketchbook and pencil and just start and do it over and over and over. But I can’t get past the mental block, it’s no longer some unknown critic in my head, it’s my voice I’m hearing.
As you saw yourself in the woman in your story, so do I see myself in you when I read your thoughts and learn about your thought processes through your artwork. You continue to inspire me. Thankyou