Drawing Tuesday - Fulham Palace

Fulham Palace seems a bit out of the way, way over there in West London, but it's only a short walk from Putney Bridge station and has lovely grounds and plenty of interesting things to put into a sketchbook, including a walled garden and a small museum.

Wonderful trees

An interesting building

Most people found subjects outside, but had to come indoors when the rain started...

Janet B was getting immersed in the landscape...

... and turned her attention to flowers in the cafe

Jo found a scene on a fragment of a plate

Janet K lost herself in the textures of a tree trunk

Sue found a carved wooden cone...

... and a real one

 I had found a carved tree stump, with a big chair and a little one, and another carving at a distance

Child-sized chair

Memorial to a gardener?

As far as I got, after much erasure...

Having dropped a pen, I found some interesting seeds on the ground, and took them inside to lay out and draw in the time remaining -

As far as I got, starting with some erasure

Woodberry Wetlands

My excuse for a walk on a sultry Monday morning was to have coffee at the Coal House. What with stopping to photograph trees in Finsbury Park, the walk took nearly an hour....

An overgrowth of flowers, ok what some people call weeds, everywhere -

 So beautiful!

 The vines were all over the place in the reedbeds -

Bullrushes bursting with pollen near the sluice -

 View across the lake - lots of building going on -

 The cafe has a roof terrace and, even more practical, a huge awning -

 I did do a "daily" drawing - with a perfectly decent pen found on the towpath -

(I'm still trying to get into the daily drawing habit ... it's like stopping smoking, the more often you try, the more likely you are to succeed!)

Wildflower meadows - delightful vistas -

 ... and some very useful insects -

Open studios - Kingsgate Studios, West Hampstead

Painting studio of Rohan Harris

Organised studio of basketmaker Polly Pollock

Hallway wall

More hallway art: wishbones by ceramicist Josie Warshaw

Chandelier

A little bit of joy, left in the hallway

Pliers collection (I loved seeing the tools of the various trades)

This one came home with me - glass by Beverly Bryon

Studio Saturday - research and reflection

... and some making - just three fabric pots, but 3 is infinitely better than 0!

An unexpected fascination with bits of letters ... simmering subconsciously for woodblock printing in due course -

 ... and not just missing bits of letters, but missing bits of words - this is outside Borough tube station, and it's something to do with Borough Market -

South Bank University (my MSc, 1991, or was it 1992)

 Earlier in the week, to the Drawing Room for the Modern Nature exhibition (till 7 July) - this wall drawing is by Viktor Timofeev -

detail

 ... and more recently, "Left Bank" by Patricia Cain at the New Englist Art Club show at Mall Galleries (till 22 June, but hopefully still online)

 Also there, this one by Gertie Young caught my eye -

 and this oil painting of a cardboard construction -

A propos of nothing - through a barred window, easels having a get-together in an atrium -

 And up Bond Street, a man with a French accent totally and loudly absorbed in his telephone conversation -

Lots to ruminate, mull, reflect, cogitate on... but mostly I'm glad to see "little things" emerging from the small chunks of time spent Actually Doing, rather than the long lacunae of Just Thinking.

Midsummer morning

A clear dawning on the longest day -

 On the way downstairs to take a pic of the sun-flooded studio

 the camera took one of those unwarranted pix -

 I got back to a fun little project started a few days ago -

 ...cutting up a magazine for "puzzle collage" ...

At first I was after solid colour but after a while bits of letters crept in, and that was much more interesting. It's interesting how, once you start something boring, it can evolve into something you never even thought of.

Today's arrangements -

Just laying them out was quicker than gluing them down. This first one was glued down as each piece came to hand, no chance to rearrange it -

 After that I laid them down carefully and did the cropping with the camera -

I'm thinking ahead to woodblocks that are just that, blocks - inkable in various colours.

Over breakfast I paged through last week's Weekend magazine and was delighted to see an "interior" that resembled my own -

 A heap of papers! Things left on little tables! Layers on the walls!

The article contrasts his childhood and his "reconstituted", un-messy living space and cleaning habits -

It's true, there are better things to do than obsessive tidying. What's your level of comfort?

While I think about that, I'm going to tear out that page and put it up on the wall.