I’ve been writing and my drawing practice has inevitably been left to slide. And I’ve felt it. Stripped bare of all its usual jostle, noise and I must say amiability, the coffee shop where I practice has not been as forthcoming with either subject matter or energy. Staff are off, either with Covid or they are self-isolating, the opening hours are reduced, making the queues, when they do come, heavier and almost continual, and there is the usual post-Christmas ennui. I’ve tried to battle through it. (I used to cry in restaurants, now I cry in cafes.) Tea helps, nevertheless drawing well is such a fickle thing, or at least that is how it feels. And yet, as I know full well, all one can or has to do is keep going. After all, I’ve been learning to draw for over 40 years now. Each day (I’ve drawn over the last three or was it four?) I set myself new things to concentrate on – whether it is just using pen and wash, or focussing on trying to capture details, like people’s shoes or woolly hats, or the way they hold their bodies in the queue (almost everyone reads their phone when they have to wait – we can’t just do nothing, it seems), or as I did yesterday trying to use a few lines or sweeps of a brush to create solidity and form.
I want to push what I am capable of – to attempt to get more of a sense of place in my work, and of interactions in the queue. But there is always this imperative to draw fast, to capture the moment before it is lost, that extraneous details become tricky to include. I need to find shorthand ways of communicating what I see.
To use faster movements and to almost skip ahead of my mind which tethers my hands. I like the wash but it can get murky, and the use of colour though attractive mustn’t be used to obfuscate badly-observed drawing. I work hard, and it is very intensive. I get home and I am sucked dry of all energy. It is an authentic way of working for me – albeit hit and miss. And a day not doing it (when the need to do paid work is too compelling and indeed necessary) is a less shining one.
