the weekly growth

of my wild carrot bunch lies already two weeks back. i'd be curious to see what they may look like now. should i ask my dad to venture out to the patch (i'm sure he'd find it) and take a pic?

the intervening weeks have been eventful: plenty of reading and a collagraphy workshop at the print studio. i also watch the imagine programme about david hockney. there's two significant things to take from it:

(a) the problem that is western perspective. how it's catapults the viewer out of the picture plane. and hockney's many attempts to re-enter that plane, by focus on movement and by tracking the many perspectives that our eyes actually see as we watch.

(b) presence and mortality in the countryside. it's somehow a bit clicheed: go back to nature to get a sense of beginnings and ends and the neverending cycles thereof. but it nonetheless led to a series of (quiet) notes to myself.

more practically, i took a step towards my idea of temporality of the daucus carota plant by ordering two accordion sketchbooks - hockney's example of drawing the mess of a yorkshire hedge as individual plants in a moving book is being transposed not the wild carrots but the wildly growing border in our backyard.

i'll fill the book with the border. i'm confident that there will be more wild growing plants in the border than the pages in the book. i know that if i was recording flying insects i would loose - there seem to be virtually none around whatsoever. what change to the fields and the field from a month ago.

the moving imagery i find for this is a bit limited...

here's a slideshow of an early part of hockney's 3 years in Yorkshire: a series of watercolour paitings:


And some more of plein air scenes of the same wood throughout the year:


but lushest are probably the stills of his paintings at google.

In the zone...

Garden door, Crail, Mixed media in Sketchbook, 14x21 cm

Earlier today, a colleague mentioned how he'd been sketching while on holidays and how relaxing he found it just to focus on one thing at a time.

This feeling of 'being single-minded' resonates with my own thoughts on sketching. In fact, it was the recent class on reflective surfaces that reminded me of it: loosing myself in the observation of one object, its details, and how in turn these details make up the object and the scene.

There are many blogs and sites on the web that discuss sketching, keeping sketching journals and many of them discuss this simple beauty of making 'Travels with a sketchbook' (as Katherine Tyrrell's blog is called).

'Travelling' both literally and metaphorically is a good point here: while sitting still or standing to take in the scene and to get down a sketch, our eyes are all the same busy with watching, looking and our mind is busy making sense(s) - and so are our hands with pencils, graphite or other tools.

Here are a few recent discoveries of sketching/drawing blogs:

• See.Be.Draw
• Laurelines
• Jana's Journal and Sketch Blog

'Flow' is the term used in psychology on this sense of absorption and interest created by a challenging and interesting task. See here for some elaboration in a Wikipedia entry. And below are some examples of my own flow when sketching (all mixed media in sketchbook, 14x21 cm) in Crail - a very cutesy fishing village in Eastneuk:

School days

I'm at my parents for my Mum's birthday. My Mum was telling stories of how apparently I've always enjoyed painting... according to her (and of course completely different to my memories) in kindergarten papers and pens were rationed when I was around as I would go through three paintings where others did one - 'easily bored' I think is what my Mum would call it.

Anyways, my memories of painting in school were rather uneventful... don't think that much of it seemed important and I was indeed easily bored. I discovered the folder of some of that school art, and with it probably one of the reasons for that lack of inspiration:
Sheet upon sheet filled with perspective drawings; two vanishing points, one vanishing point, interiors, exteriors, houses in suburban settings, in woodlands etc... all seemingly preparing one for a career in technical drawing.

Have a look for yourself:


Pencil on paper, 40x30 cm


More pencil on paper, 40x30cm

And hey ho, here's some cubist colour theory:


Poster paint on paper, 40x30cm