Forced Breaks

Fan of Colour, pastel on paper 28 x 28cm

I've had a busy week +.  It takes me days to prepare for journal workshops in schools because I am so out of shape when it comes to that kind of thinking.  As Queen of the over-planners, this time I may have spent five days getting everything just so.  That means I didn't paint or draw, just made pages of my journal, cut copious amounts of paper and cardboard and worried. Once I was teaching I realised, as I always do, that if I'd just kept it simple… Still it was great to spend two days with little people and to be part of their energy. 

I had one day between that and the opening in Aldeburgh of the mini print exhibition which I have work in, and the Friday trip to London for Mick Kirkbride's life drawing in London. Yesterday I just about finished the cover of Pauline Manders' next Utterly book cover so today I could draw! I painted on thrusday and drew on sunday.  All the rest of my time has been a forced break.

Below is the painting I had begun before I went into school mode, initially right after returning from visiting Melissa Scott-Miller. On Thursday I worked until it felt finished. Of course it was like beginning all over again.  I couldn't remember what I had been thinking.  I did a lot of looking first. I promised myself that I REALLY am going to keep a day book with notes to myself. Luckily the colours I was using were still Ok to use form my palette.

The set up stayed up, falling down as the tape gave out and drying up, so that today there were a pile of petals.  I have been inhabiting the colours, though.  I went to the carboot sale on Saturday morning, as a treat, and bought the vase on the left with the zinnia (above).  That was my starting point. I thought this time I would make the set up on the table and keep it flat, that I'd bee looking over and down on it. I liked choosing fabric to create shapes and form, as well as colour - those Kanthas! I gessoed and put a grey blue coloured ground on three sheets of paper, all 29.5 x 29.5 less the tape. I chose the first to dry.

It's so intersting how when I am drawing and use yellow or dark blue I always hit a place in the drawing where I feel like it can't possibly work and I want to give up.  I persisted and I think it has a drama that might just be the result of the recent forced break.