I need to test myself. And drawing at the circus seemed a good idea at the time. It was hard. Harder than I thought I would be. I remember circuses as a child being lit up inside the big top. This one was dark. I’d spread out my crayons, felt tips, pens and wash brushes on the bench in front of me but when the time came to make marks I couldn’t see what colour I was reaching for. It was alarming but also very exhilarating. Black became purple, blue was green. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.
Everything was happening so fast. There were jugglers, acrobats, men standing on each others’ shoulders, showgirls on horseback, trapeze artists, a tightrope walker and a clown. I just let my hand move, this way and that. I was drawing blind.
You find yourself drawing from memory almost. And any desire to make subtle marks, or to describe feature or gesture is eschewed. I think of Degas’ or Seurat’s drawings and I cannot for the life of me fathom how they did it. Was it all studio work post the experience? I wanted the immediacy of the action – to try and commit it to the page.
The interval offered some respite but the audience milled around incessantly, stirred up no doubt by the spectacle and anxious to fill their bellies with burgers and popcorn or take their little ones for pony rides in the ring or to be photographed with the clown. The music, though pounding and in itself exhausting helped to keep my momentum going.
That beautiful horse ‘dancing’ to La Paloma Blanca was so kitsch but also so stunning, I heard myself crying out with wonder. Agh, the child is ever present. I drew like one possessed. Am I happy with the results? No, but I am happy I went, faced my fears and did it. Sometimes that is all one can ask of oneself.
I try to keep the practice alive. Mostly it is a daily breathing in and out, a trying, except that is when I have writing to do. Like today. Sometimes I can manage to write in the morning and do a bit of drawing in the afternoon. Marks & Spencer’s top floor café is my current field study of choice. There are always people to watch and draw there. It’s a safe place, a little bland, but safe and the clientele it attracts reflect that safety.
Young families come, or middle-aged couples who’ve popped in for some shopping, perhaps a pair of slacks for him, or women of a certain age lunching on their own or I’ve also seen several grandparents treating their young grandchildren to a cake.
There’s noise but it’s battened down by the low ceiling and the whirr of the air-conditioning (too cold). Tea comes in pots, and there are scones and seemingly home-made cakes.
It’s twee yet sterile, clamorous but sedate. I like drawing in there, if my ‘sitters’ are a little far away. I always draw in my small sketchbook. And I start straight away, no pondering. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s like trying to keep something warm, something breathing until I can dedicate more time to it. So I will just keep going, grabbing a hour here and there and hoping, waiting for that flow, that gorgeous flow of drawing when I am beyond the stultifying effects of my mind and just communicating….
My ACW funded project doesn’t begin until mid September but I’m still trying to uphold my resolution to make a drawing every day. It’s an up and down thing, and sometimes just a case of following the tracks. I’ve been trying visiting cafes and coffee shops to stop me getting too comfortable and safe (it is definitely people I want and need to draw). Each one demands something else, requiring another sort of looking, of watching.
I try not to get too formulaic but it is hard not to. I have my favourite tools (don’t we all?) that enable a kind of short-cutting.
And there’s always this asking of myself how – can I draw better, see better, feel better? Drawing seems like an act of compassion, of fellow-feeling. At least, that is how I see it, or am I being fanciful?
I watch them eating their breakfast, their lunch, drinking their coffees and teas. Some come in alone, others come as couples. Some talk, others consume in silence. What is it that I am doing, staring or looking? What is it I am really trying to do? Is it a case of standing in someone else’s shoes or merely curiosity?
And it’s not just about likeness capturing, not really. There’s something more I aim to trap, to put to paper, what is it? – a mood, a sense of being in a particular environment, a questioning as to why they go there, to that especial place? Is it because it is familiar, safe?
Do I respond to or answer some of these questions or none at all?
