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….
