Dogged by GRRRRRRRRR

I've just soothed my savage nerves with a bowl of Tiramasu icecream after an evening dogged by PC failures of various kind. I've been seriously pugilistic with my laptop, it's a surprise that it works at all.

But finally, 4 and a half hours later, I've managed to upload my website.

I'm hoping to make a few changes over the next few weeks. A new banner to start with...


...a new gallery and a few other tweaks.

If my pc keeps on playing, that is.

daylight eases out
xxxxxcomputer lightxxxxxsweating drone
of hard drivexxxxxaching

Spring Time

It's been such a lovely day today, and I've tried to take advantage of it by breaking from progress on Listen to plant a few seeds in the back garden.
Also, because the sunshine in the room where I work was playing shadow puppets on my work.


As well as Listen I've been making steady progress with my still unamed piece...



The sririt of spring has gotten into me well and good, and I've begun to grow another new piece too. Just the bare bones at the moment.

Small, again, and on Ingres paper.


2b graphite pencil and coloured pencil.

But what a pain...my pc is really playing up (no new news there) and now I can't access Dreamweaver to update my website.

I much prefer soil, seed, paper and ink to keyboards and screens at the moment. I wish I could spend longer in this real world.

Soil, seed, paper, ink
debris under fingernails
grime beneath the keys.

Mellow Yell oh

I've progressed more quickly than usual on my new drawing, which I haven't got a title for yet.

I've used acrylic ink and coloured pencil to add colour. The horizontal orange lines aren't part of any squaring up process, I added them after I'd made the initial drawing as I thought the diagonal thrust of the composition needed a little horizontal smoothing, or soothing.


I'm hoping to finish it this week.

Entertainment while I work has so far been provided by Count Arthur Strong, who was excellent last night at Stourbridge Town Hall. Clever, quirky, and very very funny.


Yellow is the new showdrop white.

March brings breezes loud and shrill

...stirs the dancing daffodil...

...or the dancing pen, in my case.

I've managed to make more progress on Listen, and here it is.

This was progress as it stood on Sunday, since when I've managed to work more on the tree in the far left, here's how that area of the drawing looks now.


I need to work more on the foreground tree in order to finish, I was intending to push it forward more today but I've suddenly developed the frights - fear of ruining my work. So I'm going to leave off working on Listen for a few days, and sew new seeds of new work.

Here's something I began on Tuesday evening. I took the photograph I'm working from a while ago, and made a couple of preliminary studies from it recently. This is the work I did on Tuesday evening, very very brief beginings.

I'm so glad spring is finally on its way. Here's a little proof - a beautiful flower (I think it's a form of miniature Iris) bejewelled with raindrops at Durham Massey's Winter Garden.