Moli des Comte, Ciutadella, Menorca

Moli des Comte, Ciutadella.

(Markers in A5 sketchbook)

Not the most appealing viewpoint, but the only one that didn't involve being run over. I thoroughly enjoyed my week's holiday in Ciutadella, the old capital of Menorca, but found it difficult to do any drawing. In part because of the usual inertia, but also because like Verona, it's a town of very narrow streets that make drawing difficult.

 

Wooden Bridge at Trogir

Wooden Bridge at Trogir 

(markers in A5 Holidays Sketchbook)

I drew this on our lasr day in Trogir. A late flight gave me the opportunity to sit in the park and draw this wooden bridge, while slowly cooking in the sun.

It's many years since I've allowed myself to burn in the sun, but all the creams and stuff were packed away and when I began to draw I was sitting on a bench in the shade. The sun, however, did what it always does, and slowly moved round until my legs, arms and face were fully exposed. I was still peeling two weeks later.

On the Riva - outside Diocletian's Palace in Split.

On the Riva - outside Diocletian's Palace in Split.

 (Markers in A5 sketchbook)

A hot day in Split, although we did find ourselves in a ten minute downpour. But before the rain, I sat and drew this view of Diocletian's Palace in my Holidays Sketchbook.

On the roof of Villa Ruzica.

On the roof of Villa Ruzica. 

(Markers in A5 sketchbook)

At the beginning of June, Pat and I went off to Croatia for a week. It was purely a chance to get away from what was seeming like an endless Winter, and we stayed in Trogir, a lovely little town we've been to before. 

The weather wasn't quite as we'd hoped and there were days when we realised that Trogir is very much an outdoors town, with most of the bars and restaurants having little or no indoor seating. Nevertheless, overall it was warm and sunny and I made good on my promise to myself to get some work done in my Holidays Sketchbook.

This drawing is a view from a comfy chair on the roof terrace of Villa Ruzica, the little hotel where we stayed and were made very welcome.

A Missing Piece

Funchal, from Hotel Sirius. 13 August 1992
(Rotring Art Pen in A5 sketchbook)

I knew when I posted the painting of Madeira that I'd missed out a sketchbook study that was an integral part of the painting. And here it is, found in the sketchbook which I've been using as my holiday travel sketchbook since September 1990.

This is where posting from the sketchbooks starts to get complicated. In the time I've been blogging here, I've posted a great deal from this Holidays Sketchbook, so I think it may not be desirable to post the same things again. But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

Two Towers

Two Towers, Korcula (0.8 marker in A5 sketchbook)

The last drawing I did in Croatia this year. I did it leaning up against the end of a wall while people went past me, in and out of a pastry shop, a dog snuffled round my feet, and fags were stubbed out in the litter bin next to me.

It's this kind of lovely detail that comes back to me whenever I look back over my sketchbook drawings.

When in Doubt, Draw a Tree

Trees, Kastel Gomilica (0.5 fibretip, A4 sketchbook)

There were a million and one things I might have drawn in our week in Croatia, but there never seemed to be time. I did promise myself that I'd get one drawing done in my sketchbook, however, so on the last full day there, Pat and I walked along the Kastela coast to Kastel Gomilica.

Kastel Gomilica is one of the last little towns we'd not walked to to previously and it certainly lives up to its guidebook reputation of being one of the most picturesque. It doesn't reward visitors with copious eating and drinking stops, however, so after feeling a little faint, we made a short detour up to the main road to find a baker's shop, bought a croissant for Pat and a börek for me, then walked back to the sea front to eat them.

Afterwards, I thought about drawing the old kastel (built by Benedictine nuns in 16th C) but I knew I didn't really have the time to do it justice, so, while Pat sat in the sun and watched two elderly men parade up and down the seafront dressed in nothing but rather small Speedos, I spent what time was available sitting in the shade drawing these two aged cypress trees.

More Drawing Angst.

Mont Louis (A5 sketchbook, Rotring Art Pen)

I was reminded of this sketchbook drawing by some reading I've been doing across the blogs.

James Hobbs says in his blog, "Cafes remain a favourite place for me to work. They are often fantastically located, in the heart of a town, offering outdoor seating, tables to spread out on and plenty of refreshments."

I understand this absolutely. I still recall making that drawing in Mont Louis, on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees in 1991. Half way through the day we sat at a cafe table and ate our lunch, while I took as long as I felt necessary to make the drawing of the building opposite, refreshments arriving as required.. The fine lines are an indication of how my eyesight is not now what it was, and it was done with the instrument I loved so much then, the Rotring Art Pen. The damn thing seized up long ago and nothing I've been able to do to it has unclogged the nib. I'd buy another, were it not for the fact that I did buy another and the same thing happened to that. If anyone knows how to unclog them, I'd love to know.

It's become increasingly obvious that there's a huge movement around the blogosphere to encourage drawing and looking at this sketchbook makes me think again about how little I do myself.

There was a time when I did nothing but draw. By which I mean, I hadn't started to paint. I made images only with pencil or ink. Colour was actually something I avoided like the plague. I couldn't come to terms with it. At school, I would drag out the drawing part of the exercise so that I wouldn't have to "colour it in" and ruin it.

I began to paint seriously in 1989 and it's been a long hard slog to get to grips with colour, and colour and I are still wrestling with one another. In the process, I've allowed my drawing practice to fall away.

I'm not sure why this should be. Perhaps once I stopped having to make artworks in my spare time (when the actual lack of time meant that a black and white image was a more economical use of the time), it didn't feel necessary. I don't know.

Maybe the need to create paintings to sell and prop up the sybaritic lifestyle to which I've become accustomed led me to feel that a drawing would not contribute to my welfare (despite having sold several drawings in the past). Perhaps.

Some of it may be to do with my working methods. In the early days of my painting, I would take a photograph, run it through the office copier and make a charcoal drawing from the photocopy. The resultant painting would come from using all three - the photograph, the photocopy and the drawing - as source material. But as time has gone on and my abilities have improved, I don't need to do that now, because I can make some of the adjustments that the process achieved, in my head.

As a result, I find that I only seem to draw when on holiday and even then, not a great deal. The drawing above is from a sketchbook started in 1990 and still less than half full. I really must rectify this, but how to do so, when all my good intentions to do so have so far failed? Maybe I should try to get involved with some of the blogging initiatives that I see happening, like the Moleskine Exchange project that Casey Klahn is about to take part in. But how do I get involved in something like that? Anyone care to throw me a lifeline?

Crete gives me the elbow

Banana Palm (A5 sketchbook, Pilot pigment ink drawing pen)

There was a cold wind blowing in from the sea. It flapped and cracked the folded umbrellas as I sat and sipped my ouzo in an otherwise deserted taverna on the harbour front at Chania. Suddenly, a Native American squaw walked by clutching a stuffed fox with a bird in its mouth. A group of inflatable Spongebob Squarepants drifted eerily after her.

Had I read the signs, I should have been prepared for Fate leading me inexorably to an examination table in a hospital in Heraklion, with doctors cutting and tugging at little bits of my elbow, shaking their heads and exchanging knowing glances.

"You shouldn't laugh," Patsy123 had said. I'd made some kind of facetious remark about "Einstein a Go Go" when I first saw the Red Indian Chief with the big feather head-dress, who was playing an electronic flute.

But I wouldn't listen to her. No, I just wouldn't listen.

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Despite the six or seven stitches in my left elbow, I enjoyed the last few days in Crete. It was a time of political rallies. Pictures of New Democracy leader Costas Karamanlis were everywhere evident and the New Democracy rally was an exciting and turbulent affair, with car horns , music and Greek flag waving supporters thronging the streets.

By direct contrast, the KKE put up a poor show. Patsy123 and I watched the rally from the comfort of a cafe table near the Morosini Fountain, eating bougatsa. The speeches seemed dull and perfunctory and the rock band lacklustre. We'd hummed a few choruses of the Red Flag and hoped we might get the chance to join in the Internationale - the Left really does have all the best tunes, you know - but it was not to be. After a while they rolled up their flags and shuffled off out of the square looking dejected.

On our last night in Heraklion (and Crete, for that matter), we'd planned to sip an ouzo at a taverna we'd found the night before, then go off for what we hoped would prove a memorable meal. Instead, we found the ouzos was being sipped in a square destined that night to be the site of a rock concert in support of PASOK. So we stayed.

After all the usual sound checks, lighting checks, roadie walk-ons, eviction of small children from the stage, some guy from PASOK -presumably the candidate - made a satisfyingly short speech and the band came on. They were terrific and I'm still desperately trying to find out who they were. It might be that they go by the name of the lead singer - whoever she might be - or they may have a band name; I simply don't know. But they put on a storming concert, still going strong at 11.45, when we decided we really must go to find something to eat.

Less of a tourist place, more of a working city, bars and restaurants don't stay open very late in Heraklion, so we had to settle on a souvlaki joint, complete with formica-topped tables and dogged-eared menus.. Four skewers of pork souvlaki between us, with some chips , tzatziki, and pita bread, washed down with cold draught beer. Great.

A free rock concert and a souvlaki meal. Never mind the fancy food in an expensive restaurant. That was a night to remember.

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The banana palm? That was drawn from our balcony in Chania.