A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David.

Second

@theghostshirt

The mist swirled at the break of dawn.  Somewhere, beyond the veil cast by the trees around the clearing, a cockerel crowed once, then a second time, chest puffed out, its wattle vibrating like a red warning on this, the most final of days….for someone.

How it had come to this was truly beyond me, but here I was, ready to ensure an outcome.

The looks between them bred their own kind of venom.  Like vipers cursing each other at the apothecaries store as they were milked for their poison.  And oh, what an apothecary she was!  Tall and brunette, with fire in her hips and that light taste of pomegranate on her lips, she was to be worshiped.  And now was the reckoning.  One snake would coil forever at her feet.  One snake to lick her soft flesh with a forked tongue of her making.

The cockerel crowed once more.

I held up the pistol box and slowly opened its lid.  My friend, my comrade, my brother in arms, he didn’t look at me.  His gaze was on the fine barrelled pistol, weighted and crafted for his hand.  It lay nestled in the box’s velvet lining, one single leaden shot already loaded.  With my counterpart, the other second, I had already checked the twin pistol.  It was being displayed now, mere yards from us on the other side of the clearing.  It was like a fantasy mirror before us blighted with stupidity and male pride.  A pistol in an identical box, one with an identical pearl handle, crafted by the same gunsmith that had made arms for their family for decades

The glove, that modern day gauntlet, it had been thrown down last week.  At the end of a long night of chase and counter chase.  The dancing had been sublime and the costumes fanciful and pearl studied, with crinoline and lace, enough to entrap the most pious of priest.  My friend and his brother had been alive to the drama of their sibling rivalry, like two cuckoos forced to share the same nest.  She had smiled.  Thin lips, wandering eyes and that whiplash of a smile, blinding them both with its star crossed sting, dazzling enough for all our eyes.

The hammer cocked, and with steely determination he trod the yards to meet the approach of his brother, for this, the most secret of duels.

The pact had been solemnly made.  Nobody, bar those present would know the identity of the victor.  To slay your own blood is taboo.  It was agreed, when the protocol of the duel was decided, that the vanquisher would lead their life without any stain on their name.  The dead would take their killers name to the grave and as seconds, officers and gentlemen our silence was beyond question.

No matter their history and blood ties, the duellists were strangers now.  Strangers ready to end one another’s lives in a ritual of aristocratic folly.   They met.  Eyes empty and hollow, as if brotherhood no longer existed except as a martyr for personal honour.   They were soldiers and death was now their only fraternal calling.

‘Turn.  Back to back. Then on my word, advance, 5 paces gentleman,’ the other second cried.

Such was the wrath that they felt for one another, that an easy ten paces was the agreed distance, one pace for every five years of their lives.  They both knew it was a short, and certain to produce a victor.

Back to back.

They started as they had been in the womb together, when one would be first born, my friend, the stronger, the other, born second the weaker but more cunning.  Their birth, after hours of labour and subsequent septicaemia, had almost killed their mother.  The medical men had saved her life, but not her womb.  They were the last of the line.

‘Advance!’

First pace.

When they were five they had fallen ill together.  Scarlet fever had struck them both, they had been lucky to survive.  Their fevers had burned, and then broken, each at the same time.  The doctors had been amazed, their father overjoyed.  To lose both sons would have meant no succession.  My friend, first born, he would inherit, the second born, he was merely the safe guard.

Second pace.

Aged ten their mother died in a tragic accident.  It had been the boy’s first true glimpse of death.   The Reaper’s hand had turned slowly into a fist, to grab and shake them both with a sense of their own mortality.   Perhaps it was then that the true rivalry began.  One day their father would die, and only one would inherit.

Third pace.

Aged fifteen they had fought one another for the first time.  My friend was the victor but only by the slimmest of margins and it was he who carried the scar above his eye as reminder of his brother’s fury.  The rock had almost cost him his sight.  The drawing of that first blood had fuelled their rivalry for years to come.

Fourth pace.

Aged twenty, and then came the parting of ways.  My friend took to the horse and the charge of the cavalry.  His brother sought out the sea as a Captain in the making.  Every conquest and battle was merely a further tale of heroism, each trying to outshine the other son.

Fifth pace.

When they were twenty five they had met her, the apothecary.  Both were smitten.  But the Captain won out.  In secret he proposed, before he left for a ten month voyage.  She accepted.

Oh, but she played them well.  My friend she’d married whilst his brother was at sea.  She loved the lure of his wealth more than him.  And so, the Captain’s homecoming had been a stormy affair.  Home to the discovery of his brother’s prize…the woman he loved.  The duel would right this wrong.  His brother dead she would be his, his brother dead he would also inherit.

‘Turn,’ the voice called out.

Neither knew about the life that stirred inside the apothecary’s womb, her belly just beginning to swell with the presence of an unborn.  She knew well that she was with child, as did I.  She would produce an heir, who would stand, one day to inherit a fortune, with both land and title.  Blood will out, but succession can easily be controlled by those who seek to manipulate such things.  She knew her frail father-in-law would not last long, not after the death of his precious son.

Two pistols were raised.

‘Fire!’

Two shots blasted out.

My friend slumped.  His knees buckled.  Crumpled he lay by my feet, life seeping away through the gaping wound to his head.  It seemed odd to look down at him dying so rapidly.  We had fought side by side so often, and he had always seemed, like me, beyond harm.  Indeed we looked slightly alike and could have passed for brothers.  For a fleeting moment I caught sight of my own death, prostrate at my feet.

His twin brother, the Captain, he stood unharmed.   His arms fell to hang by his side, limp and helpless.  The enormity of his deed had finally struck him.  As the look of anguish passed across his tortured face the third shot blasted out.

My pistol smoked in my hand.  I didn’t miss.  The ball of lead ripped into the Captain’s heart and he fell backwards to the ground, dead.

Two gentlemen’s corpses, lying in a cold clearing, sometime after dawn, ten paces apart, duelling pistols in hand and two fatal wounds.  Such evidence spoke for itself.  It was a tragic outcome, no victor, simply two dead duellists and a faint sense that honour had somehow been restored, no suspicion on anyone else.

From somewhere through the veil of trees she came slowly, a bag of gold coins in one hand and a smile on her lips.  The apothecary approached the other second and passed him the velvet bag containing his price.  The cockerel crowed once again as he slipped away through the veil of trees.

The two brothers lay dead, ten paces apart.  She didn’t give her dead fiancé as much as a second glance.  She crossed the recently trodden ground.  Ten paces; then passed the body of her dead husband.  She walked toward me, my child in her womb and the sweet taste of pomegranate on her lips.

With forked tongue I kissed the back of her hand and coiled myself around her feet.

There’s a whole host of colourful characters that live in my neighbourhood. I thought you might like to meet them…

Demented Dave

Punk-rock Pete                                                                                      Rover, the one-eyed hound

Steve the Ogre

Blackbird Sally

For my writing workshop this week, I set the prompt ‘second’, and I thought that today I would share with you an except of the second chapter of a story that I’ve started working on again, after putting it down for a while. There seems to be a fair bit of interest in my writing at the moment which I need to make the most of, so I’m hoping to get this good enough for submission this year, if I can. 

I’m not going to tell you as single thing about what it’s about, what came before or what might come after and it’s just a first draft, but  I hope you enjoy it. 

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“I slept then, deep. No memory, even, of finding a seat, only the repetitive lull of the train bending its way through the miles as I was pulled under.

I did not dream. I slept the sleep of something dead with no capacity left to rearrange fractured thoughts into pictures, if that is what dreaming is, I have never been sure. Although, actually, no, I did not feel dead, numb as I was. Perhaps, the sleep I slept was more like that of something brand-new, without yet sensory impressions to give shape to those fleeting cognitive flashes. Yes, it was more like that.

I woke to the feeling of being shaken, and wondered, briefly, confused, if perhaps I had passed out on the station platform after all, and whether everything that had come after it had been the dream, that perhaps I would come round to find myself still sitting there, still with that choice to make. But no: my nose working quicker than my brain, and the smell of upholstery and coffee and the stale, air conditioned air that comes with many shared hours in a train carriage with a few dozen strangers, quickly convinced me otherwise, and I looked up into the oval, white-downed face of the ticket officer as he roused me to state we had reached my destination, and that the train service was terminating here.

Here. I was here. Christ, had a slept that long?

My bones ached, like they had been shaken to the point of breaking, or perhaps squashed together in some tight, restrictive place, and only just unfolding and knitting together for the first time. Maybe both were true. I was trembling as I stood, pulling my bag out from under the seat, stumbling against the edges of the seats in the aisle as I made my way toward the exit as if the train were still moving. The vague concerns of the ticket inspector followed me as I lurched and recovered on my newly purposeful legs. No, no I was fine. I didn’t need to sit down, or for him to call anyone – I vaguely flapped one arm reassuringly as I used the other to steer myself, turning my head to smile, only to trip once more. It occurred to me that he probably thought I was drunk, and that made me laugh, an irrepressibly girlish giggle that burst from my mouth like a dropped bell. I had not heard that sound in a long time, and it seemed so wildly inappropriate in the circumstances that it made my face flush, fingers covering my mouth in an attempt to stuff it back in.

After what felt like an age, I was there, the hungry mouth of the train that had swallowed me just a doorway once again as I stepped down and over the gap to the hard concrete platform, reassuringly stable and firm through my thin pumps. I had a sudden urge to kick them off and feel the rough coldness on my soles, just to convince myself I really was here, but the owl-like ticket officer, his head bobbing up and down in curiosity and mild alarm, was hovering in the doorway. I suspected taking off my shoes might be the final push that made him pick up the walkietalkie at his belt and squawk a call to the police. And I couldn’t have that, god no.

I gave him what I hoped was another confident smile, my teeth and lips seemingly clambering over one another in an over-eager bid to display my sunny togetherness. God, I must have looked insane. But it was too late: look, I was walking! I was walking away, down the long platform, my legs more confident already, the sounds of the Tannoy system and the engines of cooling trains echoing and vibrating in my ears.

I felt my head lift and my back straighten, knots of tension and held emotion falling away from me like an unravelling jumper as I walked. I felt good. I couldn’t believe how good I felt! Was this what adrenaline did? Or shock? Or was this more than chemical courage? Was this simply freedom? Is this what freedom felt like? Fuck it, I didn’t care. I was here. I had done it.

As was my habit, my eyes started to pull upwards as I walked. They always seem to do that, to pull down or up but rarely look straight ahead, as determined as any persistent squint. I often wondered why I did it, and, as far as I could remember, always had. But as my gaze met the thick stripes of molten sunshine stretching from between beams, heavy with motes that hung and shimmered, I remembered that feeling of new worlds above and below me as I walked as a child, worlds that everyone else with their straight-ahead focus seemed to miss: a mass of discarded, plastic wiring heavy with dew under the hawthorn bush on the walk to school, like stars in some tiny microcosm of the universe; the horse-head gutter outlet, high in the dim overhang of my Grandmother’s blue house, dirty water gushing from its open, screaming mouth… oh there was so much light here, so much life.

With my bag heavy on my shoulder, I let myself be pulled into the heaving tide of the station concourse, stumbling to avoid suitcases, and groups of hesitating tourists with anxious tour guides. Shuffling in-bred pigeons hobbled on their stunted, raggedy feet between the ironed legs of men in suits, and waiting teenagers, and an endless stream of beautiful, purposeful people wearing confidence like cheap perfume. The air smelt of burgers and sweat and toilets and coffee, and it was quite possibly the most wonderful thing I had ever laid my eyes on.

Overhead, time hung, suspended in a cubic clock, an upsidedown face with moustached-hands pointing to the ten and two. Its eyeless countenance dripped with bird shit tears as it laughed and turned and clacked its tongue at the shifting mass below it and the insistence of this place to count the hours and minutes, as if they actually meant anything at all. And I stopped and I stood and I laughed too, until people started to stare and I remembered where I was and that I had better keep moving.”

- an extract from Untitled, by Josie George

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Now it’s your turn. Show me your writing on the theme of ‘second’.

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) – it’ll be open til Sunday night so if you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got plenty of time to join in. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! New prompts will be up this time next week, so I hope to see you back soon.

My Dad turned 60 on the 21st of last month. I promised him I’d draw his portrait as a special present and here it is, before and after framing.

It was a special project this one. I’ve only ever done a couple of portraits of Kai before so this was a whole new challenge and one I lost myself in, loving working the lines and curves and soft eyes of a face I have known my whole life, and love dearly. And I loved it, because it was challenging but not too hard, and I felt like I was doing something that is becoming part of my bones and my breath and that is beginning to feel as natural as picking up my camera, or writing words on a page, or brushing the hair from Kai’s eyes with my fingers.

I think I might be becoming a proper artist, and I’m so excited by the feeling.

Dad smiled WIDE when I showed him. Making something for someone you love and seeing the joy in their face when you give it to them is good, good, good for your heart.

Happy Birthday, old man xx

(Drew on A3 with charcoal and chalks and a bit of pencil,  in about three and half hours.)

Hello there. Part of the reason this blog exists is to encourage my own and others’ writing and in all my distraction getting stuck into my art degree last year I managed to forget that a little. I feel strangely guilty, like the blog’s lost its way a little, and that’s no good.

So, *best commitment face*, let’s get back to it. New writing prompts every other Monday, with a chance to share your work on the Monday in between. It turns out 2012 is going to be unexpectedly full of writing for me and I’m going to really need the practice – I figure I might as well take you along for the ride. And for any of you that started the new year pledging to do more creative writing, or for those that just enjoy the excuse, hopefully our fortnightly prompts will give you a focus and a reason to sit down and try something new. You don’t need to be a writer, or even consider yourself any good. It can be a couple of hundred words or a longer piece – the important thing is just to have a go.

For anyone unfamiliar with my Writing Workshop, you can have a read all about it and browse old workshops here, or if you’re an old hand at this you can started.

Prompt

 I wrote about January at the weekend and how the first month of the year is often my wash-out month, my false start, so with us moving into a more optimistic second month I thought that could be our prompt this week – second.

Write about a second something, a second anything. Does it come with the disappointment of not being a first? Or is second somehow better, without the pressure and expectation that comes with a first something?  Write about yourself, an experience, something in your life, or in your past, write descriptive prose or poetry, or, (and I’d really like to see some more fiction on here), dream up a story with ‘second’ as the theme. It’s absolutely up to you how you interpret it.

Now…

Decide how you’d like to respond, write your post and publish it on your blog between now and NEXT MONDAY. On Monday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then, if you can, take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comments. We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind and encouraging please. Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Monday’s round-up. And, of course, if blogging isn’t your thing, you could always use the prompts for private, off-line writing too.

Enjoy!

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Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

Although I did do a bit of a gasp today when I looked at the date of my last blog post, it’s not actually that much of a surprise that January hasn’t seen me make much of an appearance here.

January is traditionally my nemesis month. One for head down, plough through, and this one hasn’t been the exception. It’s a keep your eyes on your shoes month, where big thinking and decision-making is limited to safe choices such as whether to have another piece of toast or put an extra jumper on. Light is low, pain levels predictably high and my immune system practically non-existent (I managed THREE itis-es in the space of a fortnight. GO ME!). I forget that this strange illness of mine, along with robbing me of energy, likes to play funny with the chemicals in my head to leave me demotivated and low and devoid of confidence and it’s usually late-January by the time I remember that that’s why I’m probably feeling so crud. And Kai’s not been sleeping either, really not, which, plus pain at night makes for a stupidly little amount of sleep each night, so the whole month has passed in a foggy haze.

But there’s been little islands of awakeness: a birthday, and gifts from friends and family that gave me sudden pounding feelings of gratitude and reminded me there were people out there who thought I was okay; an unexpected, arm-pinching proposal from a publisher which is all looking very promising and I hope to tell you more about soon; and a whirlwind 48 hours where I was transported to a temporary solitary oasis of sky and flat sea and low sun.

My hotel room lay just a short corridor and one flight of steps directly from the beach and I wrapped up warm and spent most of it outside, wandering up and down the beach taking photos, around the cliffy headland which I walked for miles, getting lost as befits a proper adventure, and finding a hidden cove down hundreds of steps. I watched the sun go down and the sun come up and said words out loud to the sea, and befriended an old man who sat with me while I sketched and told me I didn’t look a day over twenty one. The hotel staff couldn’t seem to quite get over the novelty of a young girl appearing there alone for her birthday, and I smiled wide when waiters in the restaurant appeared proudly with a gorgeous white chocolate-inscribed ‘Happy Birthday’ dessert. And I found a bench, high on a cliff, with the words “stay awhile and turn your thoughts to those you love”, amazed by just how many people I had in my life to think about.

So there have been good things. Many, really. And February is teasingly close, with daffodils on my fireplace and 4pm yielding a little more light each day. Time to start putting my best foot forward again, because there are Things To Do.

I shall leave you with some photos of Jersey, for those that haven’t seen them, and the news that the Writing Workshop will be back on Monday. I need the writing practice myself and its time to wake this blog up again after its winter sleep.

Here I am again, little blog. Onwards.

Wild Geese – Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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I’m not a fan of New Year at the best of times and I think it was fairly inevitable that I would find this one hard. The prospect of a Christmas without Kai or a significant other had left me feeling empty and vulnerable and prone to rushing into, and out of, things I probably should have been sensible enough to leave alone until I was in a slightly more together place. And so yesterday saw me a little puddly mess for most of the day, my pillows becoming a pathetically self-pitying Roshach test-like splodge of mascara on white linen, cross with myself and feeling hopeless and lost, vowing that the best thing all round would be to shut myself off from life where I couldn’t fall over any more or hurt anyone.

Until, that is, I thought, sod this. I’m not seeing in 2012, my brand new year, sniffing into my duvet feeling sorry for myself.

I don’t have to be good or walk, penitently, on my knees, like the words of my favourite Mary Oliver poem above say, the memory of which becoming, somehow, my one coherent thought through all of my silly panics last night. I don’t have to do anything new or different or reinvent myself or deny everything I am. I don’t need resolutions because I’m already living and loving and adventuring just fine. I just have to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves, because that’s who I am and that’s what I do best. I just need to be brave, basically, which of course is what I’ve always known. Silly girl, are you listening to yourself?

Determined nose-wiping turned into making a cup of tea and washing my face. And that lead to the impulsive one-click buying of some new books of poetry (I know, and you think your New Year was wild, huh? I bought POETRY). But that wasn’t enough. That was an everyday kind of recovery, god only knows I’m well practised at it. But this was New Year. I needed to think bigger, jump further.

So on the stroke of midnight I clicked the final ‘confirm’ on flights to Jersey in two weeks, my first proper solo trip away. Jersey, where my Grandma ventured on her own when she was my age after the war, and where I fully intend to see in my 30th birthday sat on a beach, wrapped up warm, looking at the stars, because I can.

I am not afraid of being alone because the world offers itself to my imagination. This year I will draw it and paint it and watch it and soak in every last bit of it and take it by the hand and spin it round and round. I am not afraid.

Happy New Year.

(P.S. Hotel has free Wi-Fi, so you’re coming too)

This Christmas I’m supporting Centrepoint, the UK’s leading charity for homeless young people and it would really make my Christmas if you’d consider doing the same. Homelessness in the UK jumped this year by 15 per cent from last year, and more than a third of this increase was made up of young people between the ages of 16 and 24. Using their More than a Gift service you could give a ‘gift’ on behalf of a friend or loved one to help a young person that’ll be spending this Christmas on the streets. From as little as a fiver, you could help provide a cooked meal, a book, or a warm bed for the night. Pretty much every single one of us could go without five quid’s worth of something to give someone who’s not facing much of a happy Christmas a better chance. Please think about it. If you’ve enjoyed my posts and tweets this year, you could even send the virtual gift on my behalf – my email is josie@sleepisfortheweak.org.uk if you’d like to.

Many, many thanks, and merry Christmas.

love Josie x

To finish this unit I had one more still life to do as an assessed piece, trying to draw together what I’d been learning.

As soft pastels and chalks had been my favourite coloured medium so I decided to go with them for my final piece. I liked the soft, impressionist style they created, allowing a combination of areas of blended colours and hatching lines.

The mark-making feel of pastel work reminded me of some of Paul Gauguin’s still life pictures and I took some time to study some to give me some ideas for composition and technique. These two were especial favourites – I especially liked the round forms of the fruit, the contrast against the white ceramics and including fruit both in and out of the bowl.

Gauguin - still life with oranges

Gauguin - Still life with apples and pears

I chose my subject – a combination of fruit in a wide, flat, white bowl and a jug and did a quick preliminary study using pastels…

I was pleased with the mark-making effect and the contrast, trying to get something of Gauguin’s style in there. I also experimented with what I could do with the background, rather than having just a plan flat wall. As a composition it was slightly boring though and the oranges didn’t give me much opportunity to explore tone on fruit, so I decided to swap them for apples and lemons, leaving one apple out of the bowl again for interest, and adding a few roses to the vase. Using a directional lamp, this helped to cast an interesting shadow on the back wall too. To give myself a challenge I added a folded, crumpled piece of material too.

I worked much bigger, on A2, and took more time trying to get the forms and shapes right as some of the oranges had looked a bit squashed in my first study. Thinking about negative space helped to ‘position’ the fruit in the bowl better, something I’d not quite got right on my initial study. I tried to use blended areas, using my fingers and a cotton bud, as well as some stronger, more defined hatching lines, on the fruits especially. Getting the detail right on the roses proved tricky – hard to get the fine folds of petals with pastels which aren’t that fine a medium, so I aimed to suggest their form with little areas of shadow and highlight. I’m especially pleased with the rose leaves and the overlay of lighter colour on dark - a bit like Hockney did in his iPad drawings. The cloth proved a huge challenge – so hard chasing those folds and creases and still get the cast shadows right. It saw me stopping in frustration one day and having to carry on the next but I got there in the end and I’m glad I included it – really helps to give the composition some depth and I like the way the unified colour of the roses and the fabric help to bring the piece together.

The shadows added enough interest to the background to allow me to leave it fairly neutral, although I added some white and grey hatches to give it some texture and stop it looking too flat. Using black very sparingly and grey colours helped to define contrast and shadow and give the objects and the whole piece a real sense of depth and 3D like quality, helping the main pieces stand out from the page, although I think the one shadow on of the rose on the jug is worked a little too dark. Forms turned out quite accurately – I’m pleased with the ellipse of the bowl which I do struggle drawing accurately, and the curves on the jug. In hindsight I think I could have maybe added a couple of extra pieces of fruit to the table, bottom right, as that area looks a little bare, but I was nervous about overloading the composition too much.

It was a real labour of love, this, and not easy. I lost my confidence with it a few times. Working so big is daunting and pastels and chalks aren’t that easy for working fine detail. It’s easy to smudge and loose definition. However I am really pleased with the finished result, mostly because it hangs together as a whole, complete picture, which is something I feel I’m only just beginning to achieve. I love the soft, fluid colours and shapes and the areas of shadow, especially. Looking back at my work from the previous unit and the exercises from this one, I could really see how much my drawing and my confidence had come on, too. It was so exciting to see my work progress and I really can’t wait for the next unit.

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Note: As well as sharing with you the journey I’m taking as I study drawing this year, these art blog posts form part of my degree assessment as I illustrate how I am working my through my course, what I’m learning and how I’m progressing as an artist. You’ll find them dotted amongst my usual content and posted more frequently during assessment times. I hope you’ll enjoy reading and learning with me, but if you’re more interested in none-art content then do use the navigation buttons to the right or my site map to have a look at everything else I like to talk about on here!

This was a tough set of exercises as I have no pets and no access to any really! If there’s a better reason for us getting a kitten I don’t know one, but I didn’t really get organised with that particular plan in time. So I had to improvise a bit and its meant I’ve not really done as much on this section of the course as I’d like – I’m spending time over Christmas with family with pets though so I’m hoping to add to this section of work over the next couple of weeks with some impromptu life sketches of sleeping cats and maybe some garden birds if I can get chance to sit outside for a while. I find it hard to work very quickly, being a bit fastidious with my drawing, so this will be a bit of a challenge for me I think. I’m a bit limited without a car as to where I can get to in the short times I have to work during Kai’s nursery sessions. I could do with dedicating a longer day trip when I get chance to a wildlife sanctuary or somewhere like that. Would mean drawing in front of other people though – eeep! Since outside drawing forms pretty much the whole of the next module, I’m going to have to get used to it though!

Exercise: Grabbing the chance

The one subject I did get to draw was my friend Suze’s lovely Boxer puppy, Moose. I used charcoal and chalk on coloured, textured paper which has always been my favourite medium for portraits and suited his colouring. I’m pleased with the muscle definition in his folded leg and the suggestion of hair on his paws and neck. Getting the folds of his lovely face was tricky, especially as a lot of it was hidden in the pose but I think I got it about right. I really loved doing this one and would definitely like to do some more pet portraits. Might be a way of making some money, you never know!

George Stubb‘s work helps me see how important it is to think about muscle shape and tone when drawing animals – his studies show how many animals are basically made up of different muscles shapes, overlaid with tone to show their definition and get a sense of their stance and movement. Stubbs seems to put intense focus into how animals are ‘put together’ – looking at their anatomy, and they way the positions and shapes they make as they stand and move. I guess really understanding animals in this way helps you draw them better and try and capture some of what makes them, say, a horse rather than a dog. Like the vegetable studies I did earlier in the unit, too, breaking things down into shapes provides a good starting point for drawing anything. It encourages me to look at shape first when thinking about drawing animals, helping not to get too distracted by fur and skin or feathers and features. Getting the basic form accurate first will lead to better-looking drawing when finished. I do find Stubbs’ drawings a little cold though. Depicting anatomy is only half of the interest for me – I’d hope to try and really get something of an individual’s character in a drawing too and sometimes I think that might mean sacrificing some of anatomical  accuracy, especially if you’re having to work ‘live’ and fast before animals move too much.

Exercise: Fish on a plate

For this one I had to overcome my long-held slightly icky fear of dead fish. I am freaked out by so little; spiders and snakes and all the rest hold absolutely no qualms for me, but there is something about dead fish that really makes my skin crawl. Something about those glassy, staring eyes, maybe, *shudder*. I was brave though and went to fishmongers to buy Sparky here (I thought I might be less afraid of him if he had a name).

I used a new medium for me for this one – watercolour pencils, and they may just have redeemed coloured pencils for me. I loved how, if sharp, I could define detail, and hatch in tone and texture on the fishes body and head especially, capturing the features of eyes and mouth and gills etc,  but then by adding water I could either slightly blend the colours together, or create flat washes of colour which really worked well on the shiny black plate. It felt a bit more like painting than drawing at times but I quite liked that mixed media feel. I think I did an alright job on the fish, getting the form and shape right and the subtle graduations of colour on the scales and the way his lifeless form ‘sits’ on the plate. The plate as a background worked well too giving a strong contrast to the pale fish. The table and shadows went a bit wrong though – I tried to add some texture rubbing through the wet paper to try and break up the flat colour and give a sense of the grain of the table but it didn’t quite work and detracts from the main composition and it does spoil it slightly.  Despite finding him a bit skin-crawly, I did find him beautiful and loved the iridescence of the colours and gentle feathering of his tail and fins. Next time I’d like to work with a bigger fish and maybe use inks so I can spend more time on the fine detail – I think I was just too nervous this time, small seemed safer!

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Note: As well as sharing with you the journey I’m taking as I study drawing this year, these art blog posts form part of my degree assessment as I illustrate how I am working my through my course, what I’m learning and how I’m progressing as an artist. You’ll find them dotted amongst my usual content and posted more frequently during assessment times. I hope you’ll enjoy reading and learning with me, but if you’re more interested in none-art content then do use the navigation buttons to the right or my site map to have a look at everything else I like to talk about on here!