Blast from the past - 1993, 1994, 2009

Just before moving a stack of books in front of the mule chest (thereby preventing access to its drawer), so that Carpentry and Painting of nascent bookshelves can happen in situ, I wondered what might be in the drawer.

Oh! -

The small sketchbooks (they soon mount up)

I started keeping sketchbooks in 1987, so there are rather a lot of them, of various sizes (the larger ones live elsewhere). Picking a small one at random, I found memories from September 2009 -

Train journey to Scotland ...

...with a quick sketch at every stop

Drawn while in Huntley, north of Aberdeen

"Travel lines" on the return journey

 Other pages that speak to me across the years -

Saul Steinberg's drawings of shoes, from the exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery

On the left, a view from a pub ... on the right, something rather mysterious

Of course it was tempting to look at a few more of the notebooks ...

This was a most enjoyable, most informative course

As well as taking a few notes, I did a quick sketch from almost every slide

Towards the end of the course - figures from the murals

I had no idea that in June 1994 I would find myself in Greece with my sister-in-law: Athens, Nauplio, Poros - with excursions to Olympia and, oh bliss, to Mycenae by taxi, early in the freshness and quiet of the morning, before the tourist buses arrived. It was wonderful,  the Lion Gate and the view down to Argos and the sea, and the Bronze Age ruins, and the mystery of the disappearance of the civilisation ... my best bit was sloping off to the Treasury of Atreus, a beehive-shaped tomb (tholos) with a side chamber that was SO dark, so veryvery dark; and I was alone in it to take my time adjusting to the lack of light and "soaking up the atmosphere".

On that trip I had forgotten to pack my sketchbook and all I could find in the airport before our midnight flight was a book of blank postcards, which I filled during the week we were there.

Statues from Mycenaean times (1400-1250 BC)

The view from our room in Poros, on a fresh morning after it rained mightily