I dream about drawing, literally; in one dream I was looking through a booklet thinking these drawings look like mine but I don’t remember doing them and is that really my signature?
In another dream I was trying to find a space in a busy workshop to continue work on a rough splodgy oil painting.
It’s my subconscious reminding me – as if I needed reminding – how frustrated I’m feeling because of my current enforced break from creative work.
To make things as simple as possible I wanted a discrete still life kind of object; not my hand which is my usual subject when I’m stuck for anything else to draw and not, for instance, a tree, attractive as the autumn colour is just now, which raises the issue of simplifying the foliage.
I wanted something with a definite outline and simple interlocking shapes. And, heavens to Betsy, what’s this, yep, the A5 art bag that I take everywhere with me.
I was drawing this in subdued light and picked up the purple crayon instead of the black, but I like the high colour key that gives the drawing.
I’m getting on with this new pen, a Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip, which is free flowing but, unlike the liquid ink pens that I normally prefer, it doesn’t bleed through the absorbent paper of my current sketchbook.
Each of the bag drawings took between half an hour to an hour, drawn while Barbara was catching up on episodes The Great British Bake-off Masterclass, which makes reassuringly homely background viewing.
A hour is about right for getting involved in drawing a bag. I didn’t have as long when I drew this green satchel the other day. But that’s not my bag.
Links; a larger version of a Mantaray bag, as sold by Debenhams. I like the idea that for each Mantaray bag sold a donation goes to the British Marine Conservation Society.
Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip by Mitsubishi
Today’s still life sketch is my mum’s maple syrup. This Waitrose Organic Canadian Maple Syrup, No. 1 Medium, is from Beauce in the south-east of Quebec Province ‘on the Chaudière River where there is a naturally large concentration of sugar maple trees’.
‘If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.’
Life has been such a series of unfortunate events recently but I’ve so enjoyed a short pause drawing whatever object came to hand.
‘I’m currently having my annual battle with the grey squirrels as to who gets the lion’s share of the walnuts from the tree in our garden.’ Clive tells me, ‘I ‘squirrel proofed’ the tree with old litho plates on the trunk (see Nutshell Guide for details) last week before leaving for a short holiday inYorkshire just as the nuts began to fall. I returned to a scene of carnage with broken shells and husks everywhere… the squirrels were certainly enjoying themselves and had even recruited the local crows to add to the mayhem.
Sometimes I can spend so long looking for a particular drawing amongst the stacks of my sketchbooks in the attic that I realise it’s going to be quicker to redraw it.
It’s fascinating going right back with my sketchbooks. For instance, this Daler A5 portrait format hardback from spring 1979 when I was starting on my Britain sketchbook for Collins features ‘People, buses, zoo and Hathersage’.
