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.

Sunshiny day

The weather is fooling us spring is here. But now the sun is setting, the birds are still singing, but it's getting chilly again. Nice while it lasted through.

I've been to collect my Blue Tree from Oakengates today, not such a long journey but as it was 2 trains, and the one to Shrewsbury runs only one an hour, it was a sizeable chunk out of my day. At my local station I was bemused to see a notice declaring 2 service cancellations due to 'no crew' being available. Cutbacks everywhere.

I've managed to creep forward a little more on my new piece, which I'm calling Listen.


I'm aware of this becoming a claustrophobic drawing, partly because of the green, which can be a smothering and claustrophobic colour (except when it's in nature, of course), as well as because of the detail. I've become very involved in the distant tree (as I so often do, backgrounds draw me into them, perhaps because I am one of nature's wallflowers). I do have a plan though, more of which later.

Splodges and seeds

Mom and me have taken to feeding the birds that come to our garden. I bought a couple of dispensers from our local pound shop and some cheap bird food, suet based and seed, some of which the birds seem to love and some of which they don't.

It's funny to watch the littlest birds work so industriously worrying the seeds out of their mesh dispenser, and the fat, cumbersome, apparently lazy wood pigeons flutter down to grub around in the long grass for the seeds and suet pellets they drop. The pigeons are clever, letting the little birds do all the work so that they can reap the benefits. Not so different to some humans.

I'm so glad the UK government have shelved their plans to sell off Forestry Commission land. I'd like to think it's because they were moved by the mass of public protest, but the cynic in me says they probably just realised that all the trouble they'd have to go to selling the land wasn't worth the meagre funds they'd raise.


Work is progressing excruciatingly slowly on my green picture. I've done quite a lot of splodging too, much harder to disguise on a green base. I've tried to treat it as David Cox might have done, by elaborating on the splodges and trying to work them to my advantage, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes a splodge is destined to remain just a splodge.

This week, I've been continuing to enjoy Mozart and his letters. Also Never Let Me Go, a beautiful and unsentimental film who's message surpasses the plot. We're all donors and we all complete. That's what I'm taking from it.

LISTEN

The birds have just stopped singing. A car engine starts up, its drone monotonous and bold.

More progress on my green drawing, which I've decided to call 'Listen'. Actually the title came pretty much with the begining of this piece.


I've pretty much wrecked the photographs I'm working from but the cost of Tri-colour cartridges for my inkjet printer are so pricey I'm loathe to print again. So I'm squinting round the ink blots and attempting to exercise my imagination, memory, and whatever else mysterious processes are at work to finish this piece.

Which I hope to do soon. The less time I have, the less patience too.

I wish I could work on more than one piece at simultaneously but time, space and temperament won't let me, at least at present.


I've been reading Mozart's letters. Anyone who loves Mozart should read this book. He's my obsession at the moment. His music is one of the few glimmers of light in my life right now. It inspires, moves, comforts and energises me. The very best of medicine.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOZART!

I've been loving the music of Mozart since Radio 3 began the year with their Mozartfest. I'm listening to the Magic Flute and reading the libretto, though Mozart's highly dramatic and emotionally rollercoastering music conveys so much without words.

I'm hoping something musical might infuse my new drawing, as well as the vivid green ink I've stained the watercolour paper with.


I prepared the paper last year, I can't remember why I decided to stain it green, but I'm glad I did now. It was waiting for these lines to grow on it.


This mighty oak tree brings home all the more to me how crass, selfish and utterly immoral the current Government idea to sell off our (note that word 'our' - what the Government plan to do is basically theft) forests. They say it's necessary to plug this deficit, but I don't know. The only certain deficit I can see is the moral one.

If you disagree with what the Government plans to do with Forestry Commission land, please sign one or both of these petitions.

Forestry Commission's petition.

38 Degrees Petition

Telford and Wrekin Open 2011

I spent most of Saturday on the train travelling first to Oakengates to hand in my piece for the Telford and Wrekin Open Exhibition, then travelling back in the other direction to collect PW PW 2001 from the RBSA. The lady was very complimentary about my work when I picked it up, she said that she could imagine working the way I do must be almost a kind of meditation, and I think this was very perceptive. And true.

I had another compliment this week for the piece I exhibited at the RBSA, a note from the artist Rob Perry, to say that he liked my work. It was just a brief note but I was very touched that he had gone to the trouble of sending me his compliments. Rob Perry is a well respected artist who I've been aware of since seeing an exhibition of his work at Dudley Art Gallery back in the late 1980s. He's got a great website.

I've spent the past fortnight emersed in wonderful Mozart. Yesterday was the final day (1791 day) of Radio 3's broadcast of all of his work. The word genius is spoken too often these days, true genius is a very rare thing and Mozart was definitely it.