Showing posts with label Old Cotswold Legbar eggs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old Cotswold Legbar eggs. Show all posts

9.1.08

Birdy things

Ah, I have my head back! I don't make a very good invalid, I fret about the ever growing backlog of Things To Do and attempt to do them, then get frustrated when I can't finish them or make a horlicks of it. At least I was able to keep up with the two hundred odd blogs I follow. So this is partly for Eric Orchard, who stirred up an interesting discussion on his blog about sketching and its purpose. We have different approaches. Personally I don't generally think about the whys and wherefores of sketching or even if the results please me. They are just a tool, a stepping stone on the way to a painting, and a scribbelled biro mess on a scrap of paper means as much to me as a more finished drawing. And they often are messes - this is one I scrawled down yesterday. I was surfing the net, and something set my thoughts off. I imagined cats pretending to be birds, how would they disguise themselves? Grabbed a paper scrap, a pen and started banging my thoughts out - would they wear astronaut type helmets? Tried it, then thought that masks would be better, as then you can see the ears. They also wanted some kind of makeshift tail, and a bird nearby who isn't fooled by the rather clumsy costumes. Would it be a bird on wheels - no, tried it, and scratched it out, let's have one hanging from the ceiling. It's all about the unfolding of ideas and working through them, the nearest I can get to splurging my imagination instantly onto paper...


At a glance it looks like black and white spaghetti. When or if I get round to working it up, then it will make m
ore obvious sense to the onlooker. But this one is just a memo for me, and will probably end up in the woodburner.
Now the other one, from last night, is in one of my precious Moleskines, and I do tend to be a bit tidier in them; a bit like minding one's P's and Q's with a respectable aunt. I was still ruminating about bird masks, and was trying to think of a way of depicting people withough resorting to human-types.




I rather like the way the cone-people are going, all kinds of interesting twists to be had on that theme. And just because I have a new camera and I want to play with it - lovely blue-green Old Cotswold Legbar eggs, from Clarence Court. (Almost) too pretty to eat.