Sunday, July 30, 2017

More Figures and a Seagull

pencil

Yet another pencil window work I’m afraid, which is an admission of two things: 

a) That I still haven’t finished the painting I wanted to get finished. I did think that I’d manage to get it done by the end of July and be able to post it on the blog this month, but the final - most important element - is proving to be difficult and elusive, stubbornly refuses to convince, and to compound its general recalcitrance is refusing to dry as fast as I would like it to. Every morning, I check my side-sample, and every morning my fingertips feel the slight tackiness – reducing a bit, day by day – that signals ‘Unsafe paint surface, liable to lift with the slightest agitation. You labour here at your peril’. Very frustrating, but at least I have taken the decision not to over-hurry it – the painting, after all, does only get made once.

b) That I’m really enjoying doing these little life sketches in pencil. 

They are tiny – most full-length figures are no more than 2-3 inches, so they’re much more about drawing from the wrist than from the shoulder. This month I’ve diversified slightly away from the random figures that wander into view, and have been attempting to draw the birds that flit past – mostly seagulls and pigeons. It’s a funny thing, but while I can recognise a gull in flight instantaneously – even from quite far away off – analysing quite why that is, and then recreating it with marks on paper is quite a different thing. And they move so fast – they make the movement of humans and clouds seem positively glacial in comparison.

By the way, two more things: 
c) That’s not John Cooper Clarke there, just a passing Goth. 

d) I am aware that there is no such species as ‘Seagull’. In Edinburgh, on the North Sea coast, we are treated to several specific species such as Herring Gull, Lesser & Greater Black-Blacked Gulls, Black-Headed Gull, and Common Gull. I am at present not confident of identifying these species accurately, so I am, of course, using the term as a generic.

And finally: 
e) Enjoy the poem…