Variations on the same theme

Pencil and watercolour in big sketchbook.

Poss's stuff in the dining room.

Ink pen, watercolour and a touch of pencil in big sketchbook.

How does one represent the world, in all its three dimensional plenitude, on a two dimensional surface? When Picasso split a woman’s face in several parts and showed us each segment from a different point of view, he was addressing this question.  In the art of representation, this is a core problem, one that is always implicit in those artefacts that we call pictures. Read on.

Checklist

Another drawing from a couple of days ago.

Ink pen and watercolour in big sketchbook.

Resting

If a blog is a promise, what is the promise about? I said a drawing a day: does it matter if the drawing wasn't done today? If the drawing would have been happier to remain hiding quietly between other more vain pages? If some days, I really can't get it together to make or post a drawing? Not a penance, I said, and yet there's something powerful about keeping to one's word, meeting one's own challenges, or trying to! OK, so: no time and no mood to draw today - a bit of an emergency with Poss, my very old and, until yesterday, very frisky dog. So here's a drawing done two days ago, one that was meant to lurk unnoticed between the seen pages of a sketchbook.

Ink pen and brush markers and watercolour in Windsor & Newton sketchbook.

The weather really turned on Thursday and Friday, it was nice and chilly and this dog was snug in a coat.

Comfort

Both are in watercolour, pencil and pencil crayon in Windsor and Newton sketchbook.

Usually I use watercolour as a quick wash rather than in the more traditional way as paint. I've been in the mood to give it a try, but I think I chose quite a hard subject! Anyhow, here are two attempts. I'm not sure why the scans have come out with a pinkish cast: tried to adjust in Photoshop but couldn't except at the expense of the teabags!

Finished this moleskine sketchbook (Moly 3)

Medical

Brush markers in Windsor and Newton sketchbook

Pencil and pencil crayons in Moleskine sketchbook

Today (I.'s) had his picc line removed after the twelfth and last 48-hour session of chemo. Fingers crossed.

It's a mess

Pencil, pencil crayon and brush markers in big sketchbook.

More quickies in a book

Brush markers and pencil crayon in old book (L'Anglais Simplifié)

There is nothing in my sketchbooks so far that shows any awareness of the outside world: my drawings are distinctly and purposefully non political. More about that another time perhaps! But it's been a weird old campaign, and we'll be watching all the interesting computer graphics on TV tonight as they start counting the votes. But don't watch this space for commentary!

There's a pile of old books in my studio that I've always known I'd use to scribble on, and yesterday I grabbed one before going into the garden.

Can't resist adding this photo I took today of the same bumble bee: