Words and pictures

Since I started drawing, I’ve almost stopped reading. Except picture books, which we’re devouring at a rate of knots, obviously.

I’m also finding it slightly difficult to blog. And review.

I’m assuming that this is a transitional state. That my new interest (obsession?) with lines, shape, colour, textures, light, dark and so on will gradually settle down, and my words will bubble back up. Will they?

At the moment, the world is distracting. As I walk back up the road with the children from the library, I have to work hard to focus on them, on walking, on our conversation, our journey. Otherwise I could find myself standing examining the colour transition of red to green on a fading fence (what texture is that green, it’s some kind of lichen (doesn’t that only grow on stones?)) and the interplay of the slowly setting sun and the shadows.

I might freeze while I stand there admiring it. It was cold out there today.

The cold changes the light and that changes the colours. Or so we’ve been postulating. Because the colours of the flowers in the garden photograph differently now than they did last summer. I actually managed to get a kind of violet in my recent pictures of the whatever they are around the front door. Every time I shot them last year, they were blue in the photographs, even though they weren’t to the naked eye. Auto, manual, I couldn’t get the colour.

Now I can. Anyone care to explain that to me?

While I’m pondering that, I’ll leave you with tonight’s sketch. I don’t have the right colours yet, but here’s my take on one of the roses Big bought me for mother’s day.