Recent sketches

I came across some line drawings last week that inspired me to give pen another go. Trying to 'run before I can walk' is a big problem for me so I know I have to lower my expectations and keep it simple to start with. When I saw those 'simple' line drawings I thought I could try that and not put any pressure on myself to add colour or do any shading. I drew the living room as it looks from the stairs. (The vertical line of the sofa is giving me problems for the next page though! )I had all sorts of ideas after that to fill up this little Japanese Moleskine with drawings around the house but then I got hit by a migraine and a virus on the same day! So that took the wind out of my sails this week. I also noticed that this little Moleskine has lovely paper - it's not too yellow and it has a bit of tooth, But when I looked at the other two I have, they have that horrible smooth paper and an even stronger yellow - I thought Moleskine had finally got around to using decent paper but it must have been a fluke. The plan was to do line drawings in pen in this one and try colour in the others but that's not going to work so well now!

At the moment, my life feels like a scene from a science fiction movie where the spaceship is going through an asteroid belt and getting hit on all sides. The plan was to post more this year - at least twice a week - but I think for a while the blog is going to be a little quieter and with more sketches rather than finished drawings. 2009 is not going to be a vintage year, I can confidently predict.





















Still, these TV sketches are very quick and a lot of fun to do. I've given up on the noble notion of drawing faster and I'm just enjoying myself capturing likenesses! This one, above, is one I forgot to post last time after watching The Secret Life of Elephants. That is Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton, father of Saba.





















Two people from the show So You Think You're Royal. Tracing family history is very interesting and (my hubby) Mark is a genealogist (starting, unusually in his 20's) but this show has some quite cringe worthy moments. I do wonder if these people, when they sign up to take part, know quite how the camera and the commentary is going to poke fun at them - it's like an in-joke which we, the audience, are invited to sneer along with and of which they are totally unaware. Increasingly, more shows like this one are recapping the whole thing after each break as if the audience has the intelligence of a gnat.




















Thankfully, we still have Sir David Attenborough making amazing documentaries and keeping the standards up! These were drawn from his programme Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life.

Down down deeper and down...

Isn't it strange that we are all looking for those bankers to give us explanations and apologies? How were they all so blind? So greedy! So irresponsible! Did not one of them see the warning signs? Look at the mess they have made of the economy, our lives! It's only a matter of time before we put them in stocks (excuse the pun) and pelt them with rotten tomatoes! Strange because we want them to tell us what we already know, and have known for a long time.

Hindsight is a a wonderful thing, isn't it? I wrote about the shocking levels of debt in a post here, dated August 2006. Bankers are not the only ones who could be accused of greed but millions of people bought into the illusion of 'having it all' and took out loans to make it real - even knowing they'd never earn enough money in a lifetime be able to pay them off. But now it's all gone Pete Tong, we are all the innocent victims of these nasty men and we are looking for scapegoats.

If there is one defining moment of my school years, it's of being suddenly hauled into my headmistress' office for her to have a 'little chat' with me. What triggered it, I still don't know, it was a day much like any other. As I sat in the comfy armchair and looked at her sweet smiling face, I was desperately trying to undertand what on earth she was on about. She was telling me I needed to 'toe the line', I remember that because of the look on her face as she said it but I'd never heard the expression before so I had to look it up afterwards. It was a bit of a 'light bulb moment' as I'd never really understood why certain family members treated me the way they did. I was, I discovered some time later, a scapegoat. Not in the sense of being a victim, but in the sense that scapegoats are different, people who don't/won't/can't toe the line and sweep things under the carpet - they are threatening. (It does relate to how I draw too. I can draw what I see because I don't let emotions and language influence what I see.) There was a disconnect, when I was very young, between seeing people's actions and the words they explained them with. I learned - not quickly enough - that just mentioning these things is enough for you to get accused of the very things they are covering up or don't want you to draw attention to. 'You noticed it, therefore it is your wicked/paranoid/scheming mind that must be thinking it'. I've been accused of some very bizarre things! But it's a well known and well studied behavior and it was a relief to read up about it and for it to finally make sense.

So, it's not a surprise to me that very few people spoke out about what was going on. We all had too much to lose for one thing, but the main reason is because of the way we treat people who blow the whistle or tell it like it is. They are ostracised, bullied, ridiculed and blamed. While it looks as if those bankers were so blinded by greed they couldn't see the blindingly obvious, I'm sure there were plenty of people who knew we were acting like lemmings heading for a cliff edge. It's just that we don't give the necessary support- either personally or collectively - to people brave enough to speak out. In hindsight we are all experts, but how many of us would have been brave enough - on our own, at a time when everyone else was raking in the money -to take on the company and the system or the trial by media that would have followed?

Those arrogant bankers don't really fit the mould of the scapegoat - scapegoats see too much not too little - so I think we'll have to face some uncomfortable truths if we keep pushing them to feel shame or responsibilty. Schools don't educate us to be individuals and neither do societies support them so how could the outcome have been any different? So, ladies and gentlemen, get out the stocks, gather up your tomatoes and let's all maintain the status quo, shall we?!

Sunny delights!

After the stress of the last few weeks, I went back to a drawing I started a few weeks ago and left unfinished. It's Paul and Alex from about 1996/7 when we were living in Dubai. I liked the reflected light and took two photos of them but Paul looked better in one and Alex the other. Trouble is, the photos are small and this small drawing gave me stress of another kind! I'm glad it's finished but I really feel like doing something completely different - trying out some ideas and different media perhaps, but certainly something quicker.

Paul's view - and a surprising sight

The view from Paul's bedroom window yesterday. Today, it's even darker and it's pouring with rain. While England is struggling under the worst snowfall in years, there has hardly been any here and then when it did snow it melted again the next day. Just lots and lots of rain. I wasn't expecting it today though. I had planned to go out yesterday and do some drawing - just some little thing to get me started and get over the fear of drawing in public. I decided that the sketchbooks I normally take with me might be part of the problem so I had a look to see what else I had and found a couple on the bookshelf I couldn't even remember buying!

















I definitely can't remember buying the black Daler Rowney sketchbook but it has a price sticker from Kuwait so it was obviously bought at that time. That was exactly what I was looking for! Then I realised it was the same as the book I used to keep my 'perfect' drawings in, years ago - that's the book on top. But then I found the exact same book (below) with a different cover and I decided that that was the one. Why? Because it already has two little sketches in it so I don't even have to worry about messing up the first page! Now that really is perfect! It's funny too to see this little sketch. It's the view in my wing mirror as I sat in the car outside the school waiting for the boys to come out - all big clunky 4x4's and bouncy American saloons.

Above those hardback books, I've included my tiny 'tram sketchbook', with very little in it, and in the middle, my 'TV sketchbook' which is nearly full and about to become the only sketchbook I've every completed! I have another one (on the left of it) ready to start when that happens.

The resolve had dwindled away by the time I finished going through my books so I thought I'd do a test run looking out of Paul's bedroom window, to see how I liked the format and how long that view would take me. Let's just say, a lot longer than I thought with all those windows and balconies!

I did eventually get out, but there wasn't time to draw. On the way home though, I bumped into Paul on the tram and he happened to mention that he did some sketching today. During a lesson they were made to watch a 'boring' film so he drew his trainers to fill in time. This morning, he showed me the drawing and I was absolutely stunned. He's never enjoyed art at school but always got high marks despite his protestations. I've assumed all these years that neither of my two had picked up the inclination to draw. How wrong I was! He's definitely got the talent, but also he's thinking of things around him whereas I just used to copy photos in magazines when I was at his age. I always thought, if anyone, it would be Alex who might have it. Now, I'm going to be keeping a much closer eye on both of them!

Armchair travel

Watching a programme called The Secret Life of Elephants. When I first started using colour, this time last year, I drew koalas and kangaroos from my photos and really enjoyed the quick sketching but gradually I've been drawing more and more details. I thought it would be fun to do some colour sketching again and then instead of photos, do them from TV.





















Above is Saba Douglas-Hamilton. Funnily enough, I've drawn her before here. She looks as if she should be driving her 4x4 down Sloane Street rather than out in the wilds of Kenya! Again, it was an excellent programme. I knew elephants were very intelligent but this programme revealed so much more about them and how they communicate and bond with each other, it was quite amazing.




















Finally, a few sketches from Sky News - and not my best but Michael Portillo turned out OK. Top left is Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, and right is MP Teresa May, but these are not great likenesses!