Week 11 Notes.

Just a few sketches this week..

Tuesday 30th November 
Up to the Visitor Centre again, sunny but cold, so not many visitors today. I drew the clump of trees again and clutched my tea to keep my hands warm.

Drawing and tea …

I wanted to record the figures for a sense of scale. As I drew them I was thinking about how a sketch like this compresses time. There are three figures in the sketch, but they were never all there at the same time. 
I thought about the wonderful narrative paintings from Jodhpur which I had seen a few years ago at the British Museum.

A little dog bounded by, very dapper in a smart red harness. It was a very happy, busy little dog, stopping to check things out, before rushing off to find its owner. It had a wonderful fluffy and constantly wagging tail which it carried high. I had a pang of dog longing!

Wednesday 31st November
It seemed to be a day of wandering and lost things. I saw a wandering labrador who just smiled and wriggled when I asked where it lived, a beautiful black chicken was sauntering down the lane, a lost child’s shoe was hanging on a branch and  and a solitary insole lay, just like its flat fish  namesake by the shoreline.
Here is a colony of tiny red fungi, a small fairy village scattered in the crook of a dead branch by the stream. 

Friday 2nd November
A good long walk on a cold blustery day.

One solitary windsurfer flying across the water, his one white wing echoing the wings of the gulls.

Small black clouds swept low across Top Field where once a bomb exploded during the war. ( I am learning more and more about the village history every week)

Sat 3rd November
We walked to Brampton Wood and back,  setting out in sun and returning in rain. The wood was quiet and still. At the end of one of the rides, encircling clumps of pine trees, are some magnificent rings of fungi. The circles must be at least 10 ft in diameter.

I had to check them out when I came back and I think they are Rhodocollybia maculata or Spotted Toughshank.. sadly non edible.

The writing-and-drawing walks have been a fabulously rich source of images and inspiration. My note book is almost finished and my head is full of ideas.
Five weeks left…