The Same River Twice

I live just a hop skip and a jump from the Canning River. It flows on under the Canning Bridge, meets the Swan River and the two of them, having become inseparable, continue as one all the way to Fremantle and the Indian Ocean.

It is a fine thing to sit by a river, watching it flow; to be firmly planted on one shore, daydreaming about the other. The river flows. Time passes. Thoughts sparkle and play in the dancing light, then, as if inexorably drawn by the currents, flow, drift, float on by.

The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, saw the world as ever-changing, always in a state of flux. It was he who said you can't step into the same river twice - or, more correctly:

'Everything changes and nothing remains still...and...you cannot step twice into the same stream.'

Each time I sit beside it - in a riverside cafe, on the end of a jetty, on a grassy or rocky bank - the river is new.  It is a different river, always changing, never still. Strange, then, that here,  making the coloured marks that paint a picture on my page, a kind of stillness settles and in it, there is an echo, a memory, a reflection of eternity.

I am reminded of William Blake's poem, 'Auguries of Innocence':

'To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.'

Some river sketches, a small collection - same river, different river.

Same difference.

After Dark

It was like the start of a movie.

Establishing shot: Night. An almost-empty car park, the river behind it; a huge pale ship docked not far away. On the other side, a small cafe placed incongruously half under a bridge. It is open, even at this hour. Through the door you can see bright light and the silhouette of a big man hunched over a small cup. Outside, three skinny kids grind, jump and flip their skate boards along the kerb.
Sound: Their occasional yells and laughter; a passing car; the distant honk of a ship,

Scene 1: A small, dark car pulls in to the car park. The driver's door opens and a short woman steps out. She carries a red bag slung across her body. Locking the car behind her she walks towards the river and stands, looking. Turns and walks towards the ship, stopping, looking, moving from one vantage point to the another. She is uncertain. She walks towards the street, looking inland at  three tiny houses that are lit up like shop fronts. Near them are two tall buildings that stand out from the indistinct scene around them. Seeming to have reached a decision, the woman goes back to her car, takes out a folding stool and a wide black book, parks the stool, unslings her bag, takes out a pen, opens the book and begins to draw.

I have long had an itch to draw at night. I love the way darkness transforms and simplifies, the way lights glow on water, the lit reflections of bridges and boats. I put it off mainly because of the inconvenience of sitting in the cold and the ridiculousness of trying to draw when it's too dark to see what I'm doing.
There, in that car park, under street lights, I first experienced the sheer delight of night drawing.

For a start, it is like being in a different country. Things look completely different. Added to that - there is so much I can't see (duh - obviously) - and this forces me to make a choice. Do I draw what is in front of my eyes - which sometimes makes no logical sense? Pieces of buildings don't fit together logically. I can't see where this bit joins that bit...
Or, for the sake of a drawing that looks like it knows what's what, do I make assumptions about the way things are. If I can't see it, there's a huge temptation to make it up. It's fascinating to go with the scarier option of drawing what does not make sense.

As so often happens when drawing in public, I had visitors. A couple of young guys stopped and said hi. One of them had a little white dog on his arm. We chatted for a while and then they went on and it was quiet again.

I worked with a big chunky sharpie. By the time I'd done all the lines it was getting cold and uncomfortable. I took a mental snapshot of the colours and packed up my things. At home I used gouache to paint the colours in. I wanted something solid, and gouache was it.

Ocean Time

August days have been as warm as Spring. The grass in my yard is long enough to wave in the breeze, pink blossoms are bursting out of their buds and swan couples cruise the wetland lakes with lines of fuzzy toddlers between them.

I have been walking on the beach, breathing deeply of the salt negative-iony air. Walk, sit, sketch, walk back. A couple of days ago the pattern expanded: Walk, swim, sit and sketch while drying in the air because I forgot to bring a towel, walk back wearing a crust of sand.

I'd like to make it regular, this new thing, this walking on the beach. The swimming too. New beginnings, new enterprises, blossoming, burgeoning, bursting out of old moulds ( the shape kind, not the fungal) - it's a spring thing.

Looking north from Port Beach towards Cottesloe and Scarborough.

Looking south from the same place, to Rous Head where all the containers are stored for shipping.

Playing Fast and Loose

I have had no patience lately for intricate detailed work or careful renderings. Perhaps it is the influence of our recent anachronistic spring weather that has my blood rushing and my branches stretching to wave at the sky. Perhaps it is my love affair with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen which responds effortlessly to every nuance of rhythm and stress.

Whatever the reason, my recent drawings have been more gestural than usual. I look more at my subjects than at the paper. I dive in without preamble. I seem to be skipping the part of the process where thinking happens as I abandon myself to the feel of the thing.

It's true that I sat for a couple of hours in front of a Fremantle facade, exploring its details and architectural patterns, but I was restless throughout, half loving the lines of arches and columns, half rushing to be done with them.

Here are some recent sketches:

These first two were done at the Indianna Tea Rooms at Cottesloe. A group of us gathered there for a Sketchbook Skool inspired outing and drew our morning tea and each other. Some white oil pastel found its way into the bottom drawing - I was simply too impatient to think about leaving the white or highlights of the hair and carefully painting the greys or navigating the pattern on the left hand blouse. A quick scribble of pastel, instant wax resist!

Above: This is ot brush pen but a fairly chunky sharpie. It doesn't have the melodious flow of the brush pen, but I also love the uncompromising, sturdy line of this pen.

This one (above) was wild indeed. I asked my students if they'd mind if I sketched them as they worked on their projects ( relief teaching, when not fraught with bedlam, can be boring for a supervising teacher). They assented, no doubt comforted by my assurance that they would be in no way recognisable. This is a more scribbly pen - possibly a Uniball. About 80% looking at the subjects, not the paper. NB some of these guys were sitting on couches reading - hence the laid back, half asleep look.

Fast lines coloured with a big brush.

Brush pen again.

How about you? Do you have these urges to dive in and let the lines run where they may?

The Face in the Mirror

I do not like having my photo taken. The thought of being captured on video is right up there with the idea of taking a dive off a bridge with a bungee cord attached to my ankles. 

Drawing self portraits is different.

At first there is this face in the mirror. It is fatter than I'd like. I see the coarseness of my skin and the way folds of it sag in places. My chin is no longer as well defined as it used to be and my eyebrows have no sense of decorum at all.. 

Then I pick up my pen and take a closer look. I start with a nostril. Why a nostril? I don't know - it's a place to start. I look at the shape of the dark opening of the tunnel that runs up the inside of my nose. It isn't round. The darkness isn't all the same density. I draw the outside line of my nose around my nostrils, feeling the shape and texture in my mind and somehow relaying that feeling to the hand that holds the pen. I observe. I sense. I am present with every line. I am subject, verb and object. There are no more eyes, nose, wrinkles, ears. There is only shape and curve and light and dark, delicate lines, heavy lines. 

Then colour. I see green and blue where I thought there were only skin tones. Crimson and ochre. Warm and cool. 

When it is done and I look at the drawing I have made, it is not good or bad. It is a faithful record of my seeing in that time and place. Even if it doesn't look like me, it has something of myself in it. 

These five selfies were all drawn looking into the same mirror. I used different materials each time. In some I used one continuous line. In others I tried to capture light and shade.

Drawing these self portraits there was no room for judgement; only seeing. Looking in the mirror can be the same. Looking with judgement limits what we can see.  Seeing without judgement opens up a whole new world.

North and South: Days in Lonnie and Hobes

I didn't have a lot of drawing time in Launceston. It was time to spend doing family things: going to see Alec's assembly, getting educated by Grace in the art of  playing with Barbies,  collaborating with the kids to make a book for Pop's birthday (The Adventures of Lily and Bert) and hanging out with the adults in the evenings. But there were a few hours when I'd returned from visiting Dad in George Town before my bus left for Hobart. I set off for a stroll, wound my way past the TAFE college and Launceston College, the buildings heavy with memories; down past the corner shop, now revamped and nothing like the place that sold pies and greasy chips that I remembered. I stopped at Richies Mill and sat in the late afternoon sun drinking tea as the shadows lengthened.

There was still plenty of time, so in spite of the growing cold and fading light, I walked over the bridge to the Cataract Gorge. So many years had passed since I walked along that path in the damp shade smelling of earth and leaves and age.
I stopped at a wooden seat and drew the rocks till my fingers were too numb with cold. Then walked back to the transit centre to catch my bus.

The weather in Hobart was comparatively mild, but not so mild that sitting outside drawing seemed like a great idea. I did brave the elements one morning to the extent of sitting on Jo's patio long enough to sketch the view across the valley to the hill on the other side of it - but mostly I drew interior things.

While Jo was at work I mostly read, drew, and wrote things down. Lennie, her elderly border collie, slept or occasionally shuffled, blind and arthritic, from one sleeping location to another. He's bigger than he looks here and very heavy. Jo has to help him up stairs and into the car. His back legs collapse under him sometimes and he just falls down. He is not as spiky as I drew him below:

I didn't stay inside at Jo's house all the time. I went to the movies at the State and had a tour of the building - the first time I'd seen the new additions - amazing architecture! I wandered around North Hobart, the city and the docks but only in short bursts interspersed with long periods of having coffee, browsing in bookshops and other warm pursuits. There was one terrific afternoon when I rocked up to a Japanese restaurant in North Hobart way past lunch time and had the place to myself, except for the staff, of course, and a boy who sat at a table near the kitchen and slept with his head propped up on his hands. He kindly woke up for long enough to re-fill my water brush for me.  Here is the sushi drawing from that day:

Now I'm back in Perth, back at work, back in the present. I've been working on self portraits - I'll post some soon.

Home Town

Tasmania was my home for thirty years. Going back, spending time with family, I felt as though I was going back in time as well as travelling across space. I kept expecting to bump into people I used to know, and in my mind they were no different from when I last saw them, over twenty years ago. I couldn't quite grasp that they must have aged too, that places have changed and things I remember may no longer be there.

Drawing my dad's shell collection. He has gathered shells from the beaches around Low Head and made little cardboard trays to keep them according to their classifications. I looked them up in his field guide to get the correct names.

The view from the Low Head lighthouse is spectacular - this is the expanse of ocean (Bass Strait) looking east. Why east? Because the wind was wild and westerly and sitting on the eastern side of the headland was sheltered. I sat on a lichen covered rock - the ground was much too boggy. A young man with a dog stopped to chat for a while.

A cuppa and a wooden bowl of nibbles - dried apricots and cashews - on the green tablecloth on Dad's dining table. This is in the tiny Moleskine sketchbook.

Looking west across the Tamar to the Asbestos Ranges. The light was so clear, the hills the deepest blue. Lapwings called to each other and the fog horn sounded, though there was no fog to be seen. I sat on the edge of the water on the black basalt rocks and saw no-one. I breathed the cold, clean air and remembered other times I had looked at this view.
As I sat by the water, in the cafe at the Pilot Station, in my Dad's home, I saw these places - so familiar once - with new eyes. It seems strange to me now that I never drew them before.