Studio table top

Coffee steams from my little blue cup. A podcast ends. What to write? It’s been mostly a week of work-work so I’ve been making more digital drawings. There’s a real ease to taking my phone out of my pocket, opening an app and drawing with my finger. But with no work-work today, I get to paint. It’s a hands-dirty, pushing colour around on canvas, sitting watching paint dry kind of day. Or it will be once I finish my coffee, faff around a bit, fill my pots with water, place a blank canvas on the table, pick a brush, chooses a colour, and start.

Digital drawing, 2018

New works in progress

The top piece starts easily, working from the get-go, hence the white space. The second work is difficult. Repeating marks similar to the first painting leads, of course, to a dead end. Stalled. Fumbling. Decisive pink, and a change of brush – now we’re moving.

One freshly stretched canvas sits on my painting table. In front of me, on my non-painting table, are a set of stretcher bars, a roll of primed canvas, a blue staple gun, scissors, canvas pliers, an old bike tool doubling as a makeshift pair of pliers and a staple remover. The sandpaper and sanding block are in the other room with a second set of bars.

It’s been an age since I’ve stretched my own canvases and while my skills certainly need refining through practice (and the occasional YouTube video), it’s nice to be doing it again. That “making something with your own hands” type feeling.

Sunshine, coffee and canvases – not a bad way to end the week and start the long weekend.

Sketchbook studies made while half watching tv.