Well nobody of course, he did it himself, or that’s my impression, pun intended. We may never know, but do we need to know? Perhaps not. Am I comparing myself to “van”? No, of course not but as I was elbow deep in washing up it occurred to me, that as long I was thus occupied it kept me away from the drawing board. There are times when I’ll do anything not to start drawing and other times when the washing up and other such domestic stuff conspire to keep me well away from the indian ink. Even writing this keeps me away from drawing. Some may say that might be a good thing. The drawing I’m working on stares at me on the other desk, I have a desk that I use for drawing only and it only gets properly occupied when the washing up is done and the bed is made. I bet that “Van” never made his bed, and I’m prepared to bet he only had one cup or mug ( perhaps two at most ) and washed them up between spells of drawing and between cups of absinthe. May be a cup of absinthe might encourage me to get back to the drawing, not quite sure where it is to be found at Asda. I’ll ask the lady on customer services who is only just getting to know what an aubergine is. I bet she says “it’s out of stock here but you could try our Avignon branch”.

On the positive side I’ve been more in attendance at the drawing desk of late. It’s fully equipped with pens, ink brushes, pastels. The pastels have had a good outing over the last week or so. Chalk dust at a record high, this helped by the steaming hot weather as there’s no grass to cut and very little lateral faffing to be done to keep me away from it. Results have been the usual good, bad and the recyclable. Sheds have featured large in the recent subject but I did take one turn away on the road and started a drawing of what is actually the street at the back of my daughter’s house in Los Angeles, from a photo taken in November. Standard LA blue sky, and the usual plethora of wires and telegraph poles. Unusually from of late I tried drawing this one on layout paper, and took my old visualiser route to a final piece, roughed out in marker, then a more final version from that with the rough on the page beneath.

I tried then to add the colour with pastel. Pastel goes well on layout paper. Plan A: was to get the basics down and then add the poles and wire last. It did not go as well as I hoped. Van had many goes at sunflowers, and it looks like I may have several goes at this.

I went back to the original and did another slightly more finished line version, again with marker rather than my recent foray into indian ink and dip pen. I’ve used markers for decades so I’m comfortable with them, though I do just love the intense black of indian ink which marker cannot replicate. My other half came and had a look, suggested that it looked better as a line drawing rather than a colour version, I agreed. Then she said that perhaps one colour might work, this putting the cat amongst my creative pigeons. “Blue I suppose?” I muttered, she went off the subject and just muttered about all the tea mugs I was using.

“I bet Van never had this problem” I muttered quietly to myself.

Time for a cup of absinthe.