Month: June 2025

Self Portrait, Batley, 1967

sketchbook

I featured my dad’s shaving mirror (which is still hanging on the wall in my studio) in this rare pre-beard self-portrait of myself, aged 16, from my first year at Batley School of Art in 1967.

I’d recently come across dip pen and Indian ink for drawing and I was fascinated by 19th century engravings, hence all that cross-hatching. This was probably drawn with the finest nib I’d come across, the Gillot 1950.

Self portrait sketchbook

At about that time I’d been reading J. W. Dunne’s An Experiment with Time and Nothing Dies, which might explain my interest in infinite progression:

  • the drawing isn’t complete without the sketchbook that is lying on the table in front of the mirror
  • drawing of the sketchbook isn’t complete until it includes said drawing
  • and the drawing of the drawing isn’t complete until . . . etc, etc, ad infinitum

Skechers

trainers

My last pair of Skechers proved so comfortable walking around Paris that I’ve gone for another pair.

shoe box

Beetroot and Marigolds

sketches of beetroot and marigold

Immediately I start drawing, a hoverfly zooms in and settle on the lime green top of my pen. As I work there’s a continuous chiff chaff and a v. loud blackbird, with house martins chittering overhead.

Despite several overnight frost setbacks our veg is making progress.

Eucalyptus

A eucalyptus with long strips of sloughed bark in a plantation of eucalyptus close to the former Woodhorn Colliery, Ashington, Northumberland.

I find it hard to believe that this is the regular way a eucalyptus would shed its bark, has this tree been struck by a lightning?

Heart Urchin

art urchin sketch

I photographed this heart urchin, Echinocardium cordatum, on the strandline at Druridge Bay in April.

One reason that I’ve started doing daily drawings again is to make a record of how my tremor effects me in the run up to my physio appointment for my thumb problem in two or three weeks’ time.

When it’s bad the tremor certainly results in a lively drawing but, when I get over my current cold, I look forward to being a little bit more in control!

Knotted Wrack

knotted wrack

Knotted wrack, Ascophyllum nodosum, has single bladders in the middle of its fronds.