It was all change when we returned to our coffee shop after Christmas. Stripped of tables and with a one way system marked out on the floor, I panicked. How or whom am I going to draw? Don’t indulge it, […]
Liverpool based artist Emily Speed‘s work explores the relationship between people and buildings and in particular the body and its relationship to architecture. She discusses what she has achieved over the last 12 months, including her first major solo exhibition […]
The coffee shop was initially quiet on the two mornings that we managed to visit it. We thought it might be the case after the Welsh government have imposed new restrictions due to come into force after Boxing Day. For […]
In an attempt to side-step a mind that is bent on destabilising my confidence, I often speed draw. Tea helps, as does the arrival of a motley of coffee shop frequenters in marvellous winter garb (and/or with fantastic haircuts to […]
The wind still raging post storm Arwen, the coffee shop was as cold and inhospitable as the week before. But, draw I must, and I did. With the door either propped open or left ajar for it to bash and […]
When I’m stuck inside writing, I spend what is left of my afternoons drawing things. It isn’t the same as drawing living, moving beings and I struggle to animate myself and the marks I make paper. The last two days […]
I’d had my booster jab the day before and I still felt a little crap but I went drawing anyway. I need to. The coffee shop has begun interspersing Christmas songs into their usual muzak. I don’t mind. It was […]
It was another cold morning in the coffee shop yesterday, with the door open to the elements. People didn’t stay, or if they did (mostly the stalwart regulars) it wasn’t for long. I struggled to motivate myself. I never work […]
I’d gone to the coffee shop intending to spend the three hours focussing on drawing with my collection of dip pen nibs but was stymied by the cold. I mean I did draw but I was torpid and slow to […]
I spent the weekend drawing. Writing had absorbed me all week and I needed to throw myself back into it. And, I had the delivery of some new dip pen holders and nibs and a lovely fat bamboo pen. It […]
I had remembered what day it was but hadn’t expected to see evidence of it in the coffee shop at 9.00 am that morning. I noticed the ex-paratrooper first. He wasn’t in uniform but wore a black suit. A funeral […]
I looked through my sketchbooks from Saturday and remembered the people I drew. I leave it a day to revisit my work. Paul Hogarth wouldn’t look at his drawings for three days after making them. A good practice, I think. […]
I made a long journey over these last few days and my drawing was, inevitably, restricted to the faces and bodies that shared those brief pitstops at motorways services with me. They are bleak places, particularly in the early mornings. […]
I am very conscious of the fact that all of my drawings take a very long time to complete, due to the highly detailed nature of them, and that my output of work does need to increase somewhat, if I […]
Having spent the morning writing I drew in my studio yesterday. It isn’t the same. I need the vitality of a moving object – be it person, machine or animal. I need that element of risk, of potential flitting to […]
Are you drawing me? asked a woman whom I was drawing in a Costa Coffee shop yesterday. She didn’t seem too perturbed when I admitted that I was, merely shrugging her shoulders and suggesting that there might be more attractive […]
I’m still experimenting with materials and mark-making on paper, though mostly line wins out. Line drawings are faster, and for me, more immediately responsive. I draw with all kinds of pens – fine and thick. Currently I’m favouring ink, and […]
I’m trying to build up my confidence, not only in drawing again but drawing in public. It’s funny, drawing is, for me at least, essentially a private occupation and yet I feel I need to do it in public. And […]
A journal about the daily practice of drawing.
