Lopud Harbour

Lopud Harbour
(0.8 marker in A5 sketchbook)

Pat and I spent a lovely relaxing week on Lopud in Croatia last month. The island is part of the group of Elaphiti Islands, just off the coast of Dubrovnik and has no cars on it. If you don't feel like walking, there are golf buggies to get you around.

Before I went I had my usual fantasies of coming home with umpteen drawings, but the practicalities of doing so were soon evident. The town of Lopud lies in a long strip on the coast and the land rises steeply behind; a dip in the hills allows a road to a decent sized beach on the opposite side of the island. Apart from that, it's a matter of walking tracks, many of which we found quite demanding.

As a result, it's difficult to get far enough away from the buildings of the town to get a good view of them. And to draw anything other than buildings would mean standing in the middle of the street in what was a baking hot sun. This drawing was done from the shelter of the Elaphis Bar and Pizzeria while taking time over a 500 ml glass of draught lager. The only real problem I found with it was that boats had an annoying habit of sailing into harbour and then sail away again after I'd accepted that I'd have to include them in the drawing!

I generally set myself the task of coming home with at least one drawing from any holiday so given that we also had a thoroughly enjoyable time on the island, I'm not in the least disappointed.

Farm in Langdale

Farm in Langdale (Oil on board, 16 x 16 in) SOLD

I spent last weekend in Lincoln with a group of friends. Much fun was had and a great deal of walking done. I also came back with at least one idea for a new painting. Now all I have to do is ...well, paint it.

Later in the week came this unexpected sale. This painting, done a few years ago, marked the beginning of a determined attempt to get into painting the landscape rather than the city. I still don't feel I can call myself a landscape painter, but I'm on the way.

A Natural Embrace

I took my back for a test drive today. After the last week of sitting in cars and trains for long periods, I found I was getting a lot of lower back discomfort and as a longish walk was mooted for Monday, I wanted to check things out. Not good, I found. For at least the first 45 minutes or so, it hurt rather a lot, then settled down, but after that my left foot started to ache. I guess I won't be walking down the Wear on Monday.

I'd chosen to walk down in the Valley, taking in Borders bookshop (nothing of any interest today) and Poundstretcher (big bag of birdseed), then along to Sainsbury's for some marmalade and back up round to home. In doing this, I had to go past the open field that lies beyond the dene at the end of my street.

Gateshead Council recently announced that it was having to make cuts in the Parks & Gardens budget and one effect of this seems to be that they've abandoned mowing this field. It was always meant to be a recreational area, but as it runs on a sharp slope down to the road, kids don't like to play ballgames on it. Its only purpose really is for people to walk their dogs. And now it's becoming meadow-like. I love it. It's taken on that wonderful pale sandy-yellow colour that you'd have to paint with Naples yellow and some white (or maybe raw sienna and a lot of white) and scattered amongst it are buttercups, ragwort and probably a lot more besides. I really hope they don't find the money to resume mowing.

I notice too that they've stopped spraying the edges of pavements and here and there colourful weeds and escapees from gardens are sprouting in the cracks and the angles between walls and paving stones. The natural world and the urban are coming together like fingers interlaced. Bring it on!

Home from the Island

Lindisfarne Castle from the Harbour

I was wrong about the weather. Although there was a strong wind blowing a lot of the time, we also got a fair bit of sunshine and by the end of the two days I'd adopted my "caught by the sun" beetroot look.

As is often the case with short holidays where others make the agenda, it proved difficult to do any sketching , so I opted for taking as many photographs as possible. There are certainly potential paintings in some of those, and the walking we did round the island made up for the lack of any sketching.

On the way back from one of our walks , I noticed a thrush behaving oddly on a window sill. He was jumping around, looking in through the window and tapping on it. Moments later, an old lady came to the door with a bowl in her hand and her dog scurrying round her ankles. The thrush, rather than flying away, jumped down and ran to the door where the lady threw food to it from the bowl. The dog and the bird ignored one another. Apparently this is the fourth year the thrush has come to her house for feeding. The natural world continually surprises me.

Memories

Le Merlet (Pentel mechanical pencil, A5 sketchbook)

This is for Illustration Friday's brief, Memories.

In June 1992 I went on a walking holiday in the Cevennes. The previous year I'd been walking in the Tarn and the Pyrenees and had enjoyed it so much, I was looking forward to doing it again.

When we got there, it had been raining for 18 days straight and it never stopped longer than an hour or two the whole time we were there. One of the stops was at the farmhouse at Le Merlet, where we should have been able to rest up and take a gentle stroll round the area, before setting off again the next day. The rain made it impossible, or at least too uncomfortable to leave the farm, and since it was supposed to be Summer, there was no heating and it was terribly cold.

To console myself I took out my sketchbook and spent an hour or so escaping into wherever it is I go when I'm drawing. The lack of anything much outside the window is due entirely to the rain.

Back from Little Langdale

Slaters Bridge (4B pencil, sketchbook)

This is the first drawing I made, in the first flush of enthusiasm for Little Langdale. My enthusiasm for the place never waned (indeed we've already made a provisional booking for next year), but as is often the case, I found it increasingly difficult to find things in the countryside I wanted to deal with.

Nevertheless, Slaters Bridge did get me back to draw one end of it.

Slaters Bridge (end) (Pentel Brushpen & watercolour, sketchbook)

And as always, there were collapsed and rotting trees everywhere.

Tree Form (Pilot disposable fountain pen, sketchbook)

Given that the weather was outstandingly good, with temperatures up to 21C each day and clear blue skies, I found myself wanting to walk more than in previous years. My planta fasciitis seems to have improved, leaving only a little numbness in my big toes, and it was a joy to get out on the fells; unencumbered by heavy weather-proof clothing, the walks reminded me of past holidays walking in Crete and France.

The food was especially good this year. The Three Shires Inn was only 100 yards away and served us well with steak & ale pie, game pie, Cumberland sausage studded with black pudding, and pints of Hawkshead Red and Coniston Old Man. In between, the Mad Doctor made his chilli and his flapjacks, Tall Tony his five spice chicken and I my chicken curry. Plastic Man just ate it all and entertained us with his illiberal remarks. And Raymondo? Well, he's from Sunderland.

Every year these trips seem to involve one or more detours to art suppliers to see what might tempt us to part with money. This year I bought a bottle of Indian ink, because I remembered I had a dip pen with me, but never got round to using it. Last year, I bought a tin of Derwent Inktense Pencils and didn't use them, but as I'd brought them along this time, I thought I'd give them a go.

Finding myself on one of many wrong paths, I stopped for a while to draw these rocks and decided to add some colour with the Inktense Pencils. I think the drawing was probably better before I added the colour, but you have to make mistakes to learn.

Rocks by The Dubs (6B pencil, Inktense Pencils, sketchbook)

The pencils are interesting, despite their limited success this time, because once you've added water to them they become insoluble. You could then work over them with other media, like pastel or oil pastel, which could be worth investigating in the future.

I put this on the Things To Do mental pile.

As I Walked Out

Walking and thinking. Thinking and walking. They do work together if you want them to. I'd set out with the intention of seeing where my thoughts led, and it was instructive, if not terribly unexpected.

Because it had come up the previous day, I reflected on the idea of the city and the countryside becoming interpenetrating. What started to surface was the possibility of seeing how this subject might be treated in paintings. At this point, I'd reverted to thinking in images, so I can't readily convey to you what was in my mind. It'll have to be filed away for the future. Before I can tackle that as a subject, I have to finish wrestling with the sensory input of two weeks in Venice last September. There are canals and vaporetti to be brought into existence.

It was only after I'd finished shopping in Borders and Sainsbury's that the other raft of thought drifted into view. The choice of self-help books had been almost instinctive and while I'd be the first to admit to serious tendencies to disorganisation and time mismanagement, I'd not felt previously that these were indicative of anything more deep rooted. But now I began to see that they probably are.

When I left work in 1997 to go to University, I didn't find it difficult to adapt. I simply exchanged one form of disciplined routine for another. There were times when I was lonely (my fellow students didn't share my need for discipline or routine and stayed away in droves, so that most of the time I was alone in the studio) but everything seemed to be continuing more or less as before.. I suspect now, however, that the first cracks in the foundations of my life structure began then. It was as I graduated in 2001 that the real collapse began to manifest itself. In rather quick succession a series of Bad Things happened in a period on which we do not dwell.

So here I was now, a free agent trying to make a living from painting, but with no sense of routine, no commitments to anyone or anything,other than to visit my Mother and ensure that she had everything she needed (except that I couldn't provide the one thing she needed above all else - my Father).

In September my Mother died, shortly after her 90th birthday. It wasn't unexpected and given the quality of her life I viewed it as something of a release. Until now, however, I hadn't viewed her death as the destruction of the last remaining prop in my world edifice.

But here I am now, an even freer agent whose only constants are the need to make artworks, and Patsy123 (the least demanding and more reliable of the two).

It may seem obvious that the death of my Mother should leave me in something of a state, but it's more than that. It's the death of the past; the death of all the old certainties; the death of my original support system.

So I need a new support system and a new set of routines and structures. Recognising that is the beginning. Enter the self-help books.

Down in the Valley

I wonder if it's possible to write and paint? For me, I mean. I'm fully aware that there are painters who write. And there are writers who paint. There are even painters who write on their paintings. But it seems that the only time I'm visited by the writing muse is when I'm stuck with my painting.

Or when I'm in something of a depression.

Which tends to be the same thing.

I went for a walk on the Valley yesterday. As a kid, I used to love the Valley. I'd cycle there with my buddies and we'd play all day in the woods, drinking Tizer and making useless clay lamps out of the mud we'd dig up from the river bank. I don't think you can get at the river now; it's been culverted in. And there's not much left of the woods either. Cut down to make room for more offices and factory units. But that's OK really; it's what the Valley is for, and if it makes for more jobs, then who am I to complain?

I still like walking on the Valley, though. Despite there being fewer areas of woodland, there are still open fields and every Avenue is filled with trees and bushes. These are usually kept trimmed a bit, but still spill out onto the pavements. And curiously, it's pretty quiet.

A dual carriageway runs down the middle and this is always full of cars, lorries and buses rushing about their business, but the other Avenues are generally rather quiet. I suppose because everyone's at work. Except me, the lone pedestrian.

So it's a little like walking in countryside which has been invaded by the city. Or in a city which has been invaded by the countryside. I guess it's one of those curious non-places that modern civilisation tends to produce, such as airports and shopping malls, but this one is much nicer than those.

The Valley teems with wildlife. Every bush twitters with sparrows and there are innumerable blackbirds flitting silently from tree to tree, or shrieking at everyone and everything. Earlier this year (or maybe it was late last year - pleasant memories seem to flow together now into a sun-filled whole) Patsy123 and I walked on the Valley and saw a family of rabbits sitting about in the late rays of a setting sun. As we approached, they scampered off to the safety of a huge clump of overgrown shrubs by the side of their field.

But why was I on the Valley yesterday? It was a fairly miserable day, grey and misty with occasional showers, and I was somewhat grey and miserable myself. I'd decided to go there to see what Borders might have in stock (did I mention that, in addition to offices and factory units, there's also a Retail Park?) My curiosity had been piqued by mention in a recent blog of a book by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. I thought it might prove interesting and/or useful.

In the event, I found I wasn't in the mood for the Tolle book, but I spent some time leafing through some other self-help books. Nowhere near as much time as the guy who slid a big illustrated copy of The Karma Sutra off the shelf and sat himself down at a table in the corner with it. He was still there when I left, slowly turning the pages. I'd like to think his wife or girlfriend might be in for a good time later that night, but somehow I doubt it.

Mostly I was fascinated by books about organisational strategies and time management which seemed to suggest a way out of my present malaise, but in the end I didn't buy anything. Maybe I'll go look again. Or maybe I'll just shake myself up and get on with things.