not a sketch, not a drawing....

The sky is a deep blue today. The wind blows cool and steady from the south. There are spring sounds: a duck somewhere over near the lake, the chirp and giddy twitter of birds, kids squealing and yelling in the park.

When I sat by the river earlier in the day, the waves were dark blue, a deep cold dark blue and the boats tied to yellow buoys did not stay still.

Why am I suddenly inspired to write something here after an absence so long that these posts look like the work of a stranger? Because with some delight and exultation, I have rediscovered the phenomenon of 'the study'. Not the room full of books, but the drawing whose purpose is to look, observe, notice, explore, study a thing to understand it better, to become familiar with the way it is put together, its different angles, the way it occupies space. To learn it, not in the way of 'now I can draw faces' but in the spirit of recognising how jawlines change with age and how an eye sits in its socket and  brows can perch like hedges on the outcrops of the brows.

A study. Not a sketch. Here's the difference: a sketch is a (relatively) quick capture of the thing. A study is an exploration. Sometimes a dissection.

Because the boats moved around so much I worked fast, looking at how they changed shape as they moved. The result is not really a result. It is just the record of a learning process.

This is exciting to me because, for a long time, I have been uneasy with the way I feel about my sketchbooks. I don't want them to be nice, well composed, filled with 'great pages'. I don't want to think about my drawings in terms of how good they are or how satisfied I am that they capture something. Really what I want is for my sketchbooks to be full of activity, unselfconscious, dynamic, lively things in which beauty emerges in the way you see the beauty of a windswept face with wild and tangled hair, a song escaping from its lips, its eyes bright with adventure.

Christmas afternoon: down by the river

We put our folding chairs in a dense patch of tree shade and looked out across the river.
There was hot water in a thermos for tea or coffee, spectacular home made nut and cacao and coconut confections, leftover homemade ravioli, a bag of chips and some cherry tomatoes. In other bags we had sketching supplies.

At first one of those delicious afternoon-shady-spot-hot-day-well-fed lethargies settled around us and I thought a nap might be a better choice than dragging out the sketching gear. But, pleasant as it was to sit there in a dreamy daze, the itch to make marks was strong.

I am between sketchbooks at the moment, still waiting for my new one to arrive. I had a small watercolour pad with me and decided to play with watercolours. No pen today.

At first I used the watercolours as I usually do - just as a way to add colour, mixing the colours I want and slopping them down.

Then I tried working very wet, letting the colours run around and visit each other:

Finally, in the third sketch, I put down washes, let them dry and layered other colours over them:

All in all, a lovely Christmas afternoon!

Drawing Makes Me Love Things More

For the next two Saturdays I'll be doing workshops for the City of Perth as part of their Winter Arts programme of activities. To prepare, I've been wandering around the CBD looking at suitable sketching spots and possible plan B's if the weather is too much of a challenge.

The city centre does not feel warm and friendly. The architecture does not inspire cosiness,  human warmth, humour or delight. Attempts at quirky and funky are overburdened with transparent tryharditude, poorly masking the real intent of persuading people in to spend money.  The city's dead, what can we do, oh lets make some urban arty alleyways and do what Melbourne does.

Whatever its mood and its failings, this is where we will for the next two Saturdays be and this is where I sat down to sketch yesterday afternoon.

I'd come from a sketching class at The Meeting Place, where I managed to compose a picture that was mostly asphalt and draw some oddly proportioned cars that looked like they were all parked on different slopes - not the fault of the terrain, please note, but of my failure to see the wheel and body placements properly -  I sat on a bench in Forrest Place and drew other people doing the same. As I studied the slope of someone's shoulders, the way they put their hands to their face, the hair that fell over their eye - as I drew their jaws and ears and hoodies and chins, the bleak, cold city became a much nicer place.

Drawing makes my eyes kinder, makes me love things more and makes me feel closer to the life around me. It makes me give the things I draw a quality of attention that changes the way we respond to each other and the atmosphere around us. That goes for rocks and trees as much as humans and other creatures.

It was good to remember that yesterday, that the world changes when I change.

nb: the building isn't in the city centre, its a remnant sketch from South Freo.

The Littlest Sketchbook

 For some time now, I have prided myself on my sketchbook fidelity, a sort of serial monogamy where I finish one sketchbook before starting another. But my pride hath cometh before a fall. After only a few sketches in my new A4 landscape Moleskine watercolour book which followed on the heels of a humongous Stillman and Birn, I slipped a tiny tiny Moleskine sketchbook into my bag yesterday like a stolen sweet and, as I sat waiting for Melinda to arrive for our coffee catch-up, I got it out and shamelessly drew in it.

How secretive it felt, and how delightful to hold. How quickly the wee pages were full! When I'd watercoloured an entire double page spread there was still plenty of water left in my water brush for more. When the drawing was finished, the book slipped effortlessly, in fact a little smugly, into my handbag. What to do now? Should I frolic and gambol with my new little amour while my steady, reliable love pines alone on a shelf? Or give up the wild life in favour of traditional values, honour and commitment? It may be just a fling, a passing fancy. But it might be the start of something new.