Solo drawing and travel thoughts...

At present, I am a little bit crap at solo drawing expeditions. I lose my rubber every two minutes and its ALWAYS the rubber. I'm not sure why. I spend about an hour looking for it and it turns out to be somewhere right in front of me or in my pants etc. I had another free weekend so I thought "GREAT - solo drawing trip". I packed all my bits and headed out the door, got half way down the road and realised that I had forgotten my paints, pad and pencils but yet packed everything else. Fool.

Once I got everything, I headed back down the street and hopped on the bus up to Crystal Palace. I plonked myself in the middle of the park. The sun was beating down and I realised I didn’t have any sun lotion which resulted in burnt shoulders.

I then needed a wee (miles from a loo)

I then needed a drink (which I didn’t pack)

I seemed to be in the path of every dog, wasp and child. I also ended up having some strange half naked tramp come over to me and make some sort of warbled conversation.

I had a much more successful trip the week before at Park Hill Park where I sketched with my new little watercolour moleskine which flips long ways for a panoramic type result. This layout is helping me to draw in a completely new way. I thought I would find it too small, but in fact, I'm finding the size strangely exciting and liberating. The lack of space makes me feel less daunted, yet I put just as much time and effort in as I would in a larger book (and I have both sizes but seem to be using the little one more). Heres the sketch I did in that park:

Here are some bits I drew on my Crystal Palace trip in the same little book:

Big Picture Gallery:

There is now a new gallery set up for local artists in Crystal Palace which I'm interested in participating in. There's a lot of talent out there. I do wonder how they price it all though, some of them were priced at a grand a pop for simple paintings and sketches. I can't imagine sitting down and thinking "this is worth XXX amount", how do people do it?

Last year I went on trip round Asia to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. I was thinking back to it the other day and although at the time I struggled with being in a group 24 hours a day for over a month (man that was hard) it really helped me. At the time I was in a bad place and when I think of the difference in me from then and now and it makes me smile. If only I had been drawing - I wanted to, but my head wasnt right. I took some good pictures though, which need to go on flickr. Here are a few I like (which was tough to pick through because I have HUNDREDS):









I'm going to be loading the whole lot on flickr at some point but please have a gander at my recent doodlings here