Rambling Again

14/05/09 Thursday

15/05/09 Friday

You take your inspiration where you can find it (said he sagely) and this morning I stumbled across www.everycupofteaieverhad.co.uk (when I say 'stumbled across', it's the website of the new administrator at the studios and I keyed the web address in because she gave it to me, so 'stumble' is a rubbishy description). Check it out - it's treading a fine line between genius and insanity, but, synchronicitously, finding it coincides with my own attempts to diarise and document with scrawly line and I realise the enormity of what has gone before. I don't want to draw the same thing everyday for ever, but an element of prescription and habit helps to drive me forward. So ...

I document the walk to the studios again.

It's wet. The hole in my squelchy boots is at the expense of any grip and I slip on the steps at the bottom of the footpath. So I draw them. (..?!)

I passed this van at the top of the hill, probably a plumber's because there were two long copper pipes on the pavement. I don't draw them, but the image sticks in my memory and I try to recall it half way into town.

I stop on the steep bit of Holloway to draw the pavement. A bicyclist skids dangerously as he tries his brakes while racing down the road.

The new bus station. Nothing to say.

I buy some stationery and now I've got too many bags and they're heavy and I don't want to draw any more, I just want to get to the studio.

It's a dismal day and I lose myself to the madness that is the background of my current studio painting. [It fits the theme of repetition and lunacy so I include the work in progress here even though it's not the usual out and about on the streets of Bath thing.]

Lunch time and I get given a piece of coffee and walnut cake. It was a general offer for the last piece, but something in the look on my face must have given away the strength of my desire and no one else lays claim to it. Mmm coffee and walnut cake - it makes the day. 

Later, and driven by the need to put something on the blog, I head out to paint. It's still grey, but that's okay as it gives me an excuse to paint the Upper Bristol Road again. Look there's the Bath Tour bus stopping and letting some passengers off - proof indeed (as if proof were needed) that the UBR is an appealing thoroughfare - a tourist attraction in its own right. I wonder what the on board commentary says about it.

There's rain in the air as I set off, but of course I haven't got any wet weather gear (because I walked to work and I'm an idiot). A boarded up cornershop grabs my attention and I set up by the still decaying site of the old JCR. The greens along the street on the left are quite bright and vivid, but I play it down because it's very distracting and green is a dangerous colour. That Bucks Fizz song is going through my head because the radio was going on about the Eurovision Song Contest tomorrow night - how annoying. Don't sing out loud, don't sing out loud, don't sing out loud.

The rain that has been threatening since I started, materialises in the form of drizzle, the kind of drizzle that drenches. I keep going until the paint stops sticking to the board. It's a start and I like it, so I'm not disappointed with the shortness of the session and I head back to the studio.

It's raining on the way home and I'm late so I don't do any drawing.