Black on Grey on White

It would be fair to say that a million words have not been flowing off my keyboard lately. Sorry for the sporadic posting. Life has a habit of keeping me on my toes with all sorts twists and turns. This week has been no exception. Sadly, all this spinning has kept me away from the buzz of the cyberwaves. Actually to be very honest, in order to get away from the twirling demands, we (pencils, cats and I) have been hiding deep and low in the cave studio and working on my latest commission. Time has been spent on Big Ben, a great big (surprise!) bay gelding. Sadly, due to injury, Ben is not able to live a full active life but is incredibly well cared for and loved by his owners. Below are the first few hours into the drawing. I am using a 200g Hahnemuehler paper and Derwent's 2B, 6B and B. So far so good. I'm a happy with his expression meaning: green light to go ahead and complete the portrait. All being well will be back at the drawing board on Monday and will be sure to post ...

Bricks and Stones has been pulled out of it's packing box. A sprinkling of work has been added to the baby steps. Working on the contrast between bricks and the Clyde's velvet coat is great. The end result can only be startling. Not a regular occurrence to find a horse standing free in front of a stone wall. The stone wall is starting to take on a life of it's on. The intricacies found in walls are mind boggling and really something to get my eager little scribble friends dug into. There are going to be cracks, patch-ups, distortions, crevices, breaks, unbalanced layouts. Basically an engineers nightmare come true: not one brick will be alike. Each and every one a little bit more broken or distorted than the other. Fun stuff! Next update coming soon ...

Last week has been a blur, a messy distasteful blur. Technical hitches, hick-ups and burps have been plaguing the studio ever since the move. Last week they hit an all time high. The intensity turned up just the right amount to blow things out of control; over and out of laughable margins. All my contacts (data of) were spotlessly erased, in one clean swoop (back-ups included!). 15 years of contacts, whooshed out, overwritten, lost, scarperred! 90% is (thank goodness) retrievable but 10% is not and that is NOT good! Why, I asked myself, am I so floored by this situation. Simple, the time span: 14 years 11 months 28 days are a massive 5,477 days. 131,448 hours which have encompassed countless meetings, encounters, running into new acquaintances, bumping into old friends, meeting fellow artists, shows, exhibitions, inquiries, interest... a network of varied and treasured contacts. All, so crucial, so vital to an active studio. Loosing access to all this priceless data simply gave me the ...