Week 24: Sketching

Dear all. Apologies for my slight lateness of blogging this week – not that any of you CARE! To be honest my blog this week is a bit of a cultural cop out which I will blame wholeheartedly on Sam and Zarah who DISTRACTED me from my cultural do-gooding by sitting on my balcony for too long on Sunday and totally sapping all my cultural motivation. Instead we all decided to decamp to Hyde Park and do some ‘sketching’ – and yes that DOES count as a cultural pursuit so there.

So, sketching. I did A-level art, being a pathetic girl, and the joy of that experience turned me off creating anything artistic for nearly a decade. This was due entirely to my retarded art ‘teachers’ who frankly should have been struck off. I mean talk about money for old rope; they would turn up, sit around in class reading the paper and occasionally, VERY occasionally, comment on the stuff we were doing – usually along the lines of ‘oh why don’t you make it into a lino print’. Knowing what I know now it was actually quite criminal– I was doing bloody proto-cubist stuff and it didn’t even occur to them to point me in the direction of a book on Picasso etc – luckily I was able to make that connection myself but still, it was really pathetic. Luckily towards the end of the A-level ‘experience’ we all went on a day trip to Salisbury where they were having, if I remember rightly, a really rather good sculpture exhibition around the city. Of course we didn’t bother to look at any of that being 16 – instead we went to the pub, ate cheese on toast and then got tattoos done hahahahahaha!! Teacher was SO shit scared made up for the massive bollocking we all got from the head of Sixth Form on our return – he thought he was going to lose his job!!! HAHAHAHAHA - that served the lazy useless fucker right wish he had been bloody fired. Humph.

Anyway, that said sketching, or ‘draftsmanship’ as they insisted on calling it back in the day for some reason, was always my (only) strong point in the study of ‘art’. I couldn’t paint for shit, really didn’t get on with those lino prints at all and frankly messing round with clay is just like messing round with your own shit really isn’t it? Not that we would have got the chance anyway the kilns were over in the GNVQ scum (as we fondly called them) block and we didn’t go there for fear of being beaten up. Now that I think about it though most of the people in my A-level class were pretty damn scummy themselves – I think a good two thirds of them went on to do ‘Interior Design’ at ‘University’!?! Ahh apart from my friend Nicky of course we were the only points of reason in that shitty shed of madness. Photography obviously wasn’t considered an art form back in provincial West Country world. Whatever, sketching was my strong point – either in pencil or pen, although I do remember enjoying a bit of charcoal in my time. (Gosh isn’t this an enjoyable ramble all about ME – is anyone still reading??)

Post A-levels however I literally didn’t put pencil to paper again for about 9 years because the experience was so damn awful. This all changed about a year and a half ago when my then boyfriend moved into a rather nice flat in Kentish Town. He had a very large window in his living room/kitchen which overlooked the car park at the back and more importantly some very cool old school Victoriana warehouse style buildings now clearly turned into posh or not so posh flats. Point is I decided to do a drawing of this view and slowly worked away at it for many a month until we broke up and he refused to give it back. I was actually pretty much more upset about losing the drawing than about losing the relationship which says a lot – I had invested a lot of time in both after all!! What really annoyed me/annoys me still is that he almost certainly binned it, or worse (I have visions of him and his wanker brother dancing round a bonfire throwing my possessions in one by one and chanting evil spells as they stuck pins into blonde haired wax dolls) because he didn’t even want it and I really really did!! After that I swore I would do another, BETTER picture next time I came across a conveniently placed view. It took about a year for this to happen but having now moved into my swanky swanky new flat with THE LOVELY KIND JUSTIN (happy now boy?) I have such an opportunity at hand; the view from our balcony is ACE – the back of all those old school Victoriana London town houses and muses and there is even a blue plaque etc – it’s ideal! I bought my sketch pad (A2 – am thinking big for this one people) and pencils a good month ago and hadn’t got round to starting it until this weekend though oops!!!

So, back to the matter in hand – off we went to Hyde Park in the surmounting wind, to find the perfect spot somehow encompassing our various needs: sun, shade, privacy (away from roads and more importantly evil police – NEVER had that problem on the Heath) a view of architecture of some kind (have no interest in drawing trees or hills or god forbid people!) and not too far from the toilets. We finally settled on quite a windswept spot overlooking Kensington Palace and the sketching began, for a good 30 minutes at least!! The problem is I was quite far away and it was sunny so couldn’t see THAT well. I enjoy doing the details in sketching – the textures of brick or whatever, which is why the view from my balcony is so perfect, not so much the overall ‘form’ which was clearly what this picture needed. I decided to take a short break when Zarah, the professional artist who even did it as a degree (!!) took over and did her own which very much did take in the overall ‘form’ and made me feel bad L. It also started to get colder and windier as we had spent most of the sunny part of the day smoking on the balcony - so that was the end of that really. HOWEVER, not to be deterred for long I have now been inspired to start the actual, official, view from the balcony and so far all is going well. Unlike last time I have actually sketched out the overall view first before I start beavering away at them there bricks and am rather impressed with my foresight. So far I have completed a whole section of wall!! Some people may think my extreme attention to texture and detail slightly OTT but that’s really what I enjoy doing!! It also adds a real sense of achievement to the finished product, not that I have experienced that sense of achievement for 9 years now thanks to my STOLEN drawing.

Anyway, it was only took 9 years to remind myself that sketching could be quite fun if it’s not being produced for a deadline or to be viewed by all the bitchy commoners in your class. It doesn’t matter if the end product looks like shit as it’s only being done for my enjoyment – I’m not being graded or judged on it so who cares!! It’s very much like my experience doing this blog – finally 5 years post Courtauld I have just about managed to shake any of the limited art historical discourse from my head and am now once again allowed to just walk into an art gallery and enjoy a fucking picture – not because of who painted it, not because of what it relates to in the art historical canon, not because Roger Fry said it was good – but just because I enjoy it!! Similar deal with this.

It’s also a highly beneficial experience for my fragile and highly strung mental state - there is something totally calming and therapeutic about just switching off and thinking about the texture of tiles for a while every day. This is why I enjoyed doing the last drawing so much (god knows I needed to switch off in that flat) and this is why am very excited about the summer/autumn ahead doing this one. I expect it to be finished in about 4 – 6 months depending on how quickly I get bored. When I have finished I will frame it and put it up on the wall near said view whether flatmate objects or not! However, am VERY dedicated already – I actually got off my arse and went across the road to the shop to buy a rubber on Monday!! Yes I ACTUALLY left the house for a reason other than tobacco which just shows my extreme and impressive level of commitment. On a side note though do you remember at school everyone use to laugh when you said rubber because it supposedly meant condom?? Does anyone use that term anymore?? On that note see you next week chums xxx