Open Eye Gallery's annual 'On a Small Scale' exhibition is on the horizon, so it's time to get on my A5 mojo.
Some time ago I found an old pad of blank manuscript paper in the house amongst a heap of music books. I found the pale blue-grey, thin, mechanical lines of the staffs on creamy paper exciting, full of the possibilities of unheard melodies played on strange instruments. I decided to keep it for drawing.
I began a test piece over the weekend, thinking I could perhaps make something for the exhibition, but things didn't go quite as I had imagined.

I never knew the tragedies in Mary Shelley's life until Wednesday, when the midweek pick-me-up from Brain Pickings by Maria Popova landed in my inbox, along with this exquisite passage by Mary Shelley:

"Winter passed away; and spring, led by the months, awakened life in all nature. The forest was dressed in green; the young calves frisked on the new-sprung grass; the wind-winged shadows of light clouds sped over the green cornfields; the hermit cuckoo repeated his monotonous all-hail to the season; the nightingale, bird of love and minion of the evening star, filled the woods with song; while Venus lingered in the warm sunset, and the young green of the trees lay in gentle relief along the clear horizon."

The latest drawing in my new series of work. It was impossible to take an evenly lit photograph today in spite of excellent iPhone, the drawing is more delicate than it looks in the above photo. I tried scanning but I couldn't get the scanner to work in a typical day of technology versus me. After spending the morning investigating drivers and repeated attempts to make a scan, B fixed the scanner just by looking at it, urgh! so annoying. However, the scanned details shown below are much closer to the original.
It's plain to see I would much rather be drawing than photographing and publishing them. On that subject, there has been quite a commotion in the artists' quarter of Instagram recently ...

Work began on Monday drawing into the frottage plant prints I made the previous week. Here we have four details (above) and two drawings in their progress so far. I'm pleased with how the work is going, but thought I may have got more done than I did.

I didn't actually get that much time to spend drawing every day, in fact a couple of days saw no drawing at all because I spent a lot of time in the real garden this week. A dry, warm weather front came in following heavy rainfall during previous weeks. The soil dried out rapidly and watering was required nearly every day. Weeds and grass had grown ferociously during the wet spell, and on Thursday I completely remodelled a flower bed at the front of the house, digging out old plants, grass and weeds and planting some new astrantia, aquilegia, and some I don't know what they are at all, donated by our kind neighbour who just happens to be a demon gardener - I do love a chaotic flower bed full of surprises. It kept me busy working and musing on those weird things which come out of the ground, seed heads blowing around, curly tendrils, bulbs, branching things and the fascination of the sweet pea pods drying into twisty shapes, their seeds showing more prominently through their cases; and when I came back indoors, my pen moved to depict them.

One day the sun shone down through the chestnuts, illuminating their spreading leaves like giants' hands, bringing to mind this most beautiful poem.

When I am Among the Trees 
by Mary Oliver
​
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Carrot top update - it did flower! No longer attached to the plant in its pot, I cut the triffidy bit off because it was draining too much energy from the rest of the plant, but it has flourished just in water. The rest of the plant is looking very pretty, with delicate frondy leaves and doing well now it has more energy.

The process of its growth reminded me of some forgotten work I made years ago. I took prints from some umbels by inking them up with a print roller, then transferred the image onto paper by placing the sheet over the inky plants and rolling the back of the sheet with a large wooden roller. Then I began to draw into the prints - the tentative marks show the very earliest beginnings of mark-making techniques I use today.
I can just about make out the year 2008 beside my signature in the lower right corner. I showed this one in Perthshire Open Studios that year and a friend bought it. I then forgot all about it until 2014 when a I visited the friend's house and spotted it hanging in a frame in the lounge. I have no other record of this work than the above photo I took that day - difficult to capture though the glass in its frame on the wall, but I'm glad I have it. It took me ages to locate and dig it out of my photo album. The friend moved to France and then disappeared (I fear the worst) and I will most likely never see this work again.

It was worth taking the time to find the image, not only am I glad to see it again but I mentioned in my last post that I fancied doing something different with my new work moving on, and this is it. My collection of weird stuff on my work room table keeps growing, and it's got to move on to make space, so I will try making some prints from them to draw on with all my current mark-making. I am excited about the prospect.

Just two weeks on and my avocado stone sprout is going crazy. The first one to sprout is pictured below, but the latest, No.3, is really scaring me - its root is all twisty, and when I move the jar it lashes around like a worm, and it has produced something snaky and hairy in its water. Nature is terrifying, I'm the rabbit caught in the headlights - I don't want to look, but I can't stop looking.

These are my very first successes after many years of trying to get an avocado stone to sprout! (Apologies for hairy finger, looks like everything is sprouting right now)

I just can't believe how this detail from Before There Were Saturdays relates to the current avocado stones sprouts, given I have never had any success with growing them before.
By the way, I am thinking about doing something different with new work moving forward. I still haven't found what it is, but it will happen.

Photos of a parking lot we walk through on our daily amble with the dog, the paint which marks out the spaces for cars suggesting strange alphabets, and the word eep! I had a friend with a cat called Eep when I was a student in Aberdeen.
I'm still not really getting down to any real work on my lovely new paper. My hands have stopped shaking, but we have had a stressful time this week sorting out business with our solicitor, still trying to get my father's estate concluded following my brother's death and making our wills etc. Who would have thought it would take over four years.

​Instead, I have been in a sort of pattern-making frenzy (see my Binky McKee blog) which has kept me sane during difficult times. There is something about the jigsaw-puzzle nature of pattern-making which is totally absorbing, forcing anxiety and negative thoughts far out of my mind, a soothing, quiet activity with a practical and useful product as the end goal. And lots of cheerful flowers to draw!

For the first time in my life I have managed to get avocado stones to sprout. In the past I used the cocktail sticks/ jar of water standing on a sunny windowsill method to absolutely no avail, but a couple of months ago Molly told me she had successfully sprouted one by wrapping a peeled stone in wet kitchen roll, sealing it up in a plastic box, and simply leaving it for 6 weeks. I used this method for three avocado stones, of which only one failed. At the same time I tried two with the cocktail stick/windowsill method, of which one has sprouted! I must be growing green fingers.

It's the most fascinating thing to observe, below is a sketch I drew in wonder yesterday. Until now, I have never seen a rooting and sprouting avocado stone but there is an uncanny resemblance to my drawing Before There Were Saturdays .

Flushed with success, I have been telling my friends all about it - with mixed reactions. My 'second brother' (oldest and best friend since I was 11 years old) in Germany said, "My flatmate in Edinburgh used to do that. You know, darling, they make very boring plants with just great big ugly leaves that do nothing". He grows marvellous, glamorous orchids which probably explains his opinion.
My other best friend in London, who it turns out has been making avocado plants this way for years and is currently sprouting lichee stones just by putting them in water, exclaimed with great enthusiasm: "Oh yes! How wonderful, they grow into lovely plants with lovely great big leaves!" 

Remember those carrot tops I was drawing on 6 June? Well, here they are now! They grew root-like tendrils from the eyes on the stumps, so I planted them in a pot the other day and they are now 23cm tall. I'm not sure what the two triffidy bits at the top are going to be, in my dreams they'll produce gorgeous big umbels like the ones below!

Photo: allotment-gardening.org

This is a sketchbook work from 2015 which I have been increasingly drawn to recently. I don't really know why, I think it just encompasses some of the ideas I have been putting together in my head for The Architect's Garden series (my Dad designed yachts and other marine vessels as well as buildings).
In my mind, this drawing has titled itself The Black Pearl (from the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' films). Today that galleon seems to sum up my feelings: menacing, dishevelled, yet with battered sails still flying bravely and defiantly in the black-hearted winds of change. If Covid19 hasn't decimated my close friends and family, cancer has.
​RIP Robin John Walker, beloved brother, 13 July 1962 - 20 June 2021.

... to all our American friends!

I took this photo 4 years ago at the Edinburgh Christmas market and something about it makes me think of fireworks and celebrations, so very appropriate for today. Only 4 years ago, though. So many unbelievable events have happened since then, it feels more like 10 years ago.

I really got into 1930s book endpapers a couple of weeks ago. I made a few with the risograph textures I had been using for my Binky McKee patterns (above) and couldn't resist experimenting with a cut-out element from my recent drawing In No Way Pure. The result is pictured below, I had to do it by hand as I couldn't work out how to make a mechanical repeat tile (too much maths involved) but, hmm interesting!

Shortly after drawing last week's sprouting carrot tops, I drew a the core of a bell pepper. Its flesh had been cut away for a salad leaving the arched pyramid form with its bustle of seeds inside, rather like a deconstructed buttressed church sheltering a congregation. Or a big ghastly alien throat, if you prefer. It hung around in my work room and began involving itself in a most interesting process - I wouldn't say it was decomposing, because nothing went mouldy (wrong PH for mould, perhaps, a bit like sourdough culture?) - the fleshy parts just began to disappear leaving the seedball intact, I suppose by dehydration. I drew it again collapsing upon itself, pictured below.

I didn't throw it away after drawing it, I seldom do throw away these things, hence my collection of gross objects which will freak anybody out when I die and they come to empty my room. But look what it has become now. The photos below show what's left; it's the size of a conker now, and the small remaining part of the base of the pepper (right pic) has become a pretty flower. From a big, proud, glossy green fruit my bell pepper has gone to this - fascinating, as Spock would say. It actually feels nice to handle.
Oh well, I suppose it happens to us all in time!  I will get around to drawing its remains soon which will clarify what I see, something photos cannot do. And I may even experiment with growing the seeds.

Growing carrot tops in a saucer of water on the windowsill.
With everything in the world blooming, growing, seeding and dying back all at once there is so much all around to draw. I'm not sure how it works, but drawing from life especially in the summer when there is so much cyclical life of plants on display feeds into the larger drawings, where my studies become the things, or the subject matter, of the larger works.

I really enjoy drawing from life, and don't use photography to draw from if at all possible. I do use photos as a reference for my Binky McKee pattern making because the work is highly stylised and there is no need to understand spacial positions. My larger ink drawings may not appear to require spacial information, but I definitely do need it in order to get to grips with an organism and how it works. (More here on how I use photos for my Binky work).
Here is a little collection I made over the last week of things I want to draw:

A perfect haul of treasures and lots of drawing to do!