Drawing Tuesday - "oldest utensil"

 First of all, what's a utensil? Dictionary definition: " a tool, container, or other article, especially for household use "

Second, what's "oldest"?? Maybe a shaped flint, or a simple stick, or humble pot, if we're thinking about the history of humanity and its tools. Or maybe the inherited wooden spoon that holds, through many years of use, the secrets of a mother's or grandmother's cooking. Or even any tool that is older than we are? Sometimes "oldest" is defined by the young company it keeps. How you feel about it might depend on whether you think "old" is good, or undesirable. 

Mystery object - is it a utensil?

(We thought it might be a tagliatelle cutter)

From Mags - A stick drawn with sticks using Knopper Oak Gall and Alder Buckthorn natural inks.

From Janet K - Only about 20 years old but treasured. Knife rack made by my Uncle Art. Only when seeing it in a photo did I realise how wonky the top edge looks!

From Carol - This is a homemade Tap Wrench made by my Father – in –law. It has been in my garage for 38 years and to my knowledge we have never needed to use it to cut any threads – I rest my case!

From Sue S - Here’s my aged utensil - dad used to make home-made wine & l inherited this corking machine.

From Janet B - I suspect this Black and Decker is older than me. I borrowed it from my father 40 years ago and never returned it. He would occasionally ask how it was and I would reassure him that I was looking after it and putting it to good use. 

From Gill - I don’t have any interesting old utensils as I’m not sentimental and often declutter as I don’t want to become a hoarder.

So I have tried to draw the cutlery my parents bought me over 35 years ago.

From Judith - Ah, didn’t check, remembered useful not oldest so am offering an extra pair of hands.

From Joyce - here’s a rug making tool from my grandmother. I think it’s the kind used for pulling pieces of fabric through a hessian backing since you can prod to make a hole first.

From me - The old knife sharpened (from Germany, 1930s or 40s) has become a strange creature, bug-eyed, hairbrush-shaped...

Poetry Thursday - The More Loving One, by WH Auden

The More Loving One

- W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.




The poem was recommended by Alexander McCall Smith when he answered readers' questions in a short video in April 2020. 


In this short video, he reads a very short story from his latest collection.

Avertising slogans was my first thought, and Mr Google helpfully pointed out a short, rather american, list here 

Political slogans - health-message slogans (rather a lot of those about at the moment) - what else is there, there'll be one along any moment, slogans are plentiful. In fact, "slogans are plentiful" is or could be a slogan... why not make up your own, and find something to draw that suits it! 

From Joyce - A bit sketchy but you get the idea!

From Carol - ‘Love it or hate it’. Marmite drawn some years ago and fun with collage and shapes done today.

From Ann - my attached abstracts says a lot about the last few months for me...jokey but element of truth in its simplicity. 

From Mags - Today, it's 5 years since we moved to Faversham and I visited the 'Fleur' Faversham Society Visitor Centre which has just reopened to buy a replacement (and spare !) of my broken favourite Fine Bone China mug. If you apply enough Photoshop filters , all sense disappears.

(The slogan is: "THERE IS ENGLAND and...THERE IS FAVERSHAM)

From Janet K - My slogan and thought for the day.

From Sue S - A stitch in time saves 9.

Here’s my stitch-up!

From Judith - Inspired by Millwall Football Supporters’ slogan. Fortunately took an interim photo before spilling water all over drawing.

From Gillian - Say it with flowers.

I received these beautiful flowers from friends just for watering their plants while on holiday.

From Jackie - a few thoughts before I ran out of ideas!

From me - "Many hands make light work"; collaged from a recent Weekend magazine. The challenge was to use just that magazine.

 Fortunately, when you open your cupboards in search of stacks of bowls, plates, etc, you won't be finding this sort of thing -

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/o112125/waster-unknown/

- though you may have seen this "waster" in the ceramics galleries of the V&A. 

Also from the V&A, from the Winter 2020 V&A magazine, is this arrangement of stacked and unstackable bits of ceramics. What a nice tidy pattern it makes!

Another thing about stacks of crockery is the small matter of "clearing the table" - do you put the cutlery on top of the stack, or leave it - precariously - with its plate?

Consider also -

Insides of dishwashers?

Mixing up colours and/or shapes? 

Going wild - 

Living dangerously -

[Apologies if the above images don't show, they do show in the Preview but I'm not at all certain that what the creator of the blog post sees is what makes it out into the real world!]

From Carol -  the return of the troublesome ellipses

From Judith - Quick drawings made with Procreate and pen

From Richard - I  intended to sit in the garden for this subject but it was cold and there’s hardly any sun at this time of year. Even so the shadows keep moving!

From Sue S - Here’s my stack of crocks drying after breakfast

From Ann -  a jug of cutlery

From Mags - Spent ages stacking different combinations of ' Scraffito' ( some very teetery ! ) , taking photos and then using various Photoshop filters ( particularly liked ' find edges' and ' graphic novel' ). (The final one is "inverted")

Find edges

Graphic novel

Invert

From Gillian - My ramen bowls. I treated myself to these during lockdown and I’m really enjoying them. Great for soup and pasta.

From Joyce - My first foray into mono printing, what a shaky hand! I was using acetate as a plate, very slippery.

From me - some old work - tracing (with careful observation of ellipses), from an enlarged photo, of the disposition of crockery on the draining board - it was the combination of colours that caught my eye. When I went to paint them in the sketchbook, the original composition wasn't quite working, not sure if it is now!

Drawing Tuesday - Keys

Lots of scope here, from the keys in your pocket to one of the elaborate medieval keys that can be found in books or online. Or even earlier - this is a Roman key that, in absence of pockets, can be worn as a ring -

Most of our keys are for doors, whereas in earlier times they might well have been for chests and boxes. And the locks were items of engineering and wonder. This one is from the 17th century - 

Ah for the days of being able to wander into the Ironwork gallery at the V&A and choose a key or two ....

But not all keys are to do with locks - consider typewriter keys! Our alphabet makes it easy, but Chinese and Japanese are a bit more difficult - have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_typewriter to see how they did it. 

Maps and diagrams have keys ...

Music has keys ...

And a thing can be "key" to something else, a bigger concept or a scheme - ie, crucial.

There's a geographical use (island - Key West, Florida, for instance) and wharves (quays), and also a botanical use "a dry fruit with a thin membranous wing, usualy growing in bunches, as in the ash and sycamore 1523". And the way that plaster is caused to key to lath, and adhesion through the roughness of a surface.

From Sue S - Here’s my set of colourful ‘keys‘ - found on a Suffolk walk in August. I did sketch then & decided to add a silhouette version just to enjoy the whole shape. lt seems to hover?! Is it a plane, or a ghostly drone?

From Janet B - My car and house keys and a spare set on a Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery penguin key ring. 

From Judith - Front door key knitted in silver coated copper wire.

From Gill - Used this opportunity to compare different metallic media for my bunch of house keys.

From Mags -  I'm rather  out of practice  'keying out' problematic plants when doing botanical surveys ( and  'Stace', the go -to essential  guide  has  very few illustrations).  So I was delighted to find amongst the volumes this Field Studies Council  leaflet ' The Cloud Name Trail'.  Trying to summarise it on a couple of pages  was hard , should have stuck to drawing some ' proper' keys'

From Richard - Rather lazy pen sketch from me, but all good practice.

From Ann -  large key on A3 paper. ..no idea which door it opens!  One key and observed shadows around it.

From Joyce - our camper van keys, the blue and yellow (scooby doo?) was made by my daughter 35 years ago! And the small roundish thing is to attach them to my rucksack, oh happy days! 

From Janet K - Our house keys.

From Jackie - Adding my attempt…

From Carol - my keys proved problem some to draw as kept getting interruptions and having to use them in-between drawing. Such small things but so important to us.

From Najlaa - My keys with lots of key rings and I chose two, one from the British Museum and other one from Barcelona.

From Jo - experimenting with my new bottle of Indian ink, using a pen and then a brush. It was meant to be a try-out for a proper drawing, but then I didn't do one!

From me -  a deadline for a complex woodblock print stopped me drawing physical keys, but did provide a "key" to what's going on in the layers of the reduction print. The "xray" version is a juxtaposition of two prints of the same photo, manipulated to make one brighter than the other; one is inverted (yes it's complex...) -

Being a multi-layered print, it has to be "keyed" in to the registration marks.

And another angle - from Julia T, an archeology volunteer, a key drawn in a workshop about drawing archeological artefacts - to scale, and with stippling -