Feeling the wind and drawing anyway

Getting over myself in an A6 sketchbook

Going out drawing with a sketchbook - so exciting! So much possibility! Such a terrifying blank page!

Today, I really needed to get some drawing from life done. I’m in Dungeness, a place I’ve wanted to visit since my teens and today I was finally here.

Prospect Cottage, former home of the late Derek Jarman

But it was too much pressure!

I was fighting my assumptions of how great my drawings would be in this amazing landscape.

I was also fighting 40 mile an hour winds.

My arse was really uncomfortable sitting on a railway sleeper. The ultramarine pans fell out of my portable watercolour palette. I had to chase my plastic ziplock bag across the shingle when it blew away. My painting attempts were awful and I gave up approximately 17 minutes into my longed for day of drawing.

Deep breath and a stern word with myself.

I got rid of the Big Sketchbook and The Watercolours. I’m not here to knock up a masterpiece, I’m here to record this astonishing place.

I went out into the full force of the wind with only a little A6 sketchbook and one pencil.

And this time I stood up, making the experience as difficult as possible and the materials as simple as possible.

I made scrappy hectic drawings of the scrappy hectic sea. And I started to enjoy myself.

Bracing my feet against the side of the boardwalk, it took all my concentration to keep upright and keep my pencil on the paper.

No brain space left for worrying about how I thought my drawings should look.

So I had to just draw without thinking, and it was brilliant.

Were my drawings any good?

Hmmm, “good” isn’t really a helpful measure here. I had FUN, more fun than I’ve had drawing in months. And I’ll remember the feeling of the place when I look at how wobbly my lines were as I pushed against the wind.

And a drawing isn’t an end point anyway. Each drawing is just one drawing on a big ol’ continuum of getting better at my craft.

Maybe tomorrow’s drawings will be better.

And maybe I’ll find an easier way to get out of my own way.

One which doesn’t involve so much wind.

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