Author: Richard

Basic Drawing

hand sketch

I feel that it’s a good time to go right back to basics with my drawing and writing after the slight uncertainty that I’ve felt over how far I should push it with my problem thumb.

ink
De Atramentis ink bottle, original drawing 2.5 cm, one inch, across. Even enlarged, there’s no sign of the ink running into the watercolour wash.

I’ve been struggling with my drawing and writing pens too. Sometimes I’ll try several before I find one that actually works. I now realise that the dregs of old ink that I’ve been filling them with is the problem, clogging up the nib. I’d poured the last remnants of both the sepia and the black into the same bottle, but I think that the time has come to make a clean break.

I’m now going steadily through the process of squeezing out all the old ink from each of them and refilling with the fresh ink that I bought recently.

My Problem Thumb

Drawing hands

This morning I went to see a physiotherapist about my problem thumb and he observed that I’ve got a high level of arthritis in my thumb joints, along with crepitus – a grating sound or sensation in said joints.

I felt this grinding and grating most when he manipulated my right-hand thumb joints:

  • The MCP, the Metacarpophalangeal joint, midway on the thumb
  • The CMC, the Carpometacarpal joint at the base of the thumb

When he performed the same actions on my left hand, I didn’t feel a any ache or pain whatsoever.

“Have you ever had a hand injury?” he asked me.

I couldn’t think of a specific injury so I suspect that my main problem is wear and tear over the years and possibly my misguided attempts to strengthen my thumb joint by overdoing the hedge trimming with a basic pair of secateurs just over a year ago. That led to pain and swelling around and beyond my thumb joints.

The good news is, provided the pain stays below 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, I can keep on as normal, drawing, gardening etc, meanwhile doing some fairly undemanding exercises to keep movement in the joints and very gradually to add some strength to them.

I’m not doing myself any harm by working with a lowish level of pain, provided I don’t overdo it.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

As for my essential – also known as familial – tremor, in recent weeks I’ve made good progress, not on the tremor as such, but in controlling my frustrated reactions to it using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

hand

CBT is pretty similar to the process I go through every time I draw, you find a calm space while staying alert and aware.

Ironically it could be that all the drawing I’ve done over the years and perhaps my attempts to control the tremor that have contributed to my high level of arthritis.

I was reassured to see that even my physio – who I guess was half my age or less – had a small level of tremor as he demonstrated some of the exercises for me. It’s natural he assured me.

Educating Horbury

Educating Horbury

My thanks and congratulations to Helen Bickerdike and the Horbury People’s Museum team for putting together the latest exhibit in the display cases in Horbury Library.

St Peter's School staff

It features the surprising number of educational institutions associated with the town over the years, including St Peter’s Church of England primary school, where I was lucky enough to have a series of remarkable form teachers between 1958 and 1962:

  • Miss Andrassy, who was so keen on art
  • Mr Harker who took us rambling and Youth Hostelling
  • ex-professional footballer Mr Thompson who was a terrific storyteller (even when he was really supposed to be teaching us whatever the curriculum was at that time)
  • Mr Lindley who encouraged us in drama, puppet shows and giving short talks to the whole class in the regular Friday-afternoon Storyteller’s Club
  • keen fell-walker Mr Douglas, the perfect example of a pipe-smoking headmaster with a voice like Gandalf with a Yorkshire accent.
junior artowrk
Clay head from my third year in Mr Thompson’s class, booklets and painting of the rebuilding of Golden Square, Horbury, from my fourth and final year at St Peter’s in Mr Lindley’s class (called 4D rather than 4L, we might not have been the perfect class, but we weren’t that bad).

Link

The Horbury Tapestry

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.