photo: recent sketchbook pages - this may become one of a new postcard set
Waking up in daylight. Now this still feels like a novelty. Looking out of my upstairs window and seeing the fleeting sight of crab apple blossom. I like to spot the elements of a landscape that might have been seen, year after year. If I look out of our side landing window there’s a view that changes from mountain range to desert hills, but it is neither. Our eyes see what we want to see? The old gnarled tree with kindly hands that bows at the entrance to the woods.
People are likely to see human shapes in mostly everything. Faces in the wallpaper have been spotted and admired (or feared) since the dawn of wallpaper….
photo: finding faces in stitch - a work in progress
Finding connections, patterns and memories in things is something both comforting and engrossing. What I find to connect with, faces from the past, stories unwritten - old patina on pottery, all these things are just for me. What makes one unique is that none of this matters to our daily breath but everything does.
Feeling a connection to a long-ago past brings me great comfort. Where is now anywhere? Here, as I type, or in the next moment when I look across the room and see a sparrow tapping at the window, with a shadowy girl stood just beyond. We are told to live in the moment and at the same time plan for the future. It’s all rather giddy-ing and overwhelming, this twenty-first century life. Best not take too much advice from others, but find your own quiet path through each day….
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photo: a selection of sketchbook pages - note your weekend pages may not be as ‘finished’ or anything like this at all. It is up to you!
Thanks to everyone who has shown an interest in the sketchbook weekend. I will be sending an email to you in the next few days to confirm your hopeful participation and to give a few more details.
The idea is simple: on June 3/4 we will all aim to fill a sketchbook during that weekend. You may choose your favourite blank sketchbook, make your own, or decide on something picked out at random from your local art shop (if you are fortunate like me to have one). You may work in any medium, whether this is paint, pencil, collage, or a combination.
You may wish to take a ‘scrapbook’ approach - as I sometimes do, making many bits and bobs and then creating pages. There’s a lot of work in this approach, but it can be extremely fun and rewarding. I love to layer up and can be quite ruthless with sticking over what I thought was something special. It’s all about the page working as a page.
Drawing is often talked of as ‘simply’. There is hardly anything simple about a good drawing, no matter how simple it might appear to the viewer’s eye. Filling a book with observations, is of course a common and worthwhile practise. Intuitive drawing is something perhaps rather nebulous, especially to artists who focus on what they see in front of them. Next week I will write more about approaches to intuitive drawing, and I hope this may be interesting to you.
If you have yet to declare an interest in the sketchbook weekend - it is not too late. You can sign up by emailing me ccullis at gmail dot com. Like I said, I will be in touch early next week.
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A few small stories
I often plan walks with post boxes in mind. A warm afternoon and I have a few letters to send, so I walk to a certain post box, confident the collection time is soon. But today I find out ‘they’ (Royal Mail) have changed the timings on yet another local box. There is a small moment of quiet outrage: to change the time from 4.30pm to 9am is outrageous, egregious, what can be done! I laugh at myself for feeling so uptight about this. Imagine a whole episode in a Barbara Pym novel - this can only lead to our protagonist’s downward spiralling…. Walking home, I am stopped in my tracks by the booming yet shrill tones of a blackbird. I am stood exactly by its hedge and the language coming out is complex and colourful. The blackbird is having a conversation with another across the road. I am enthralled, like a child listening to intense adult debate. Whatever it is they are so earnest about, it has to be more important than anything I have to say.
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The rain, oh the rain. Plans to watch the Coronation on the big screen in our local town have been scuppered. I am grateful to instead visit my sister and watch with family. Before the event I have put together a little kit of patchwork scraps, scissors, thread etc… But we all sit so quietly enthralled, I have no mind to stitch. I watch, intrigued by the medieval, complex nature of proceedings. Spellbinding. I hope to get to see the anointing screens in person one day - all that careful needlework. Later, back home, it takes me a while to find my own thoughts. I cut new shapes from old cloth, to stitch and make something different again.
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My son is cutting the back lawn. I look down from my bedroom window. What do you think? He calls up to me. What do I do with this? He points at a huge weed in the middle of the lawn. Dark green and definitely deep-rooted. I call down and say I will have to dig it out later. Days on, the dark green mass has grown and from above resembles nothing less than an smirking green man.
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photo: My drawing no.6 (sold) - I am continuing on with sharing and offering a drawing a day this month
Thanks always for reading here, for your kind comments and likes. If you enjoy my writing and would like to support these studio notes, you are welcome to buy me a coffee. Much appreciated.
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I do hope you’ll use that first image for postcards!
I so enjoy reading your posts.
Thank you 😁