This is water...

I had almost forgotten.

There is an invisible barrier on my paper.











Water follows existing water paths, then it stops.

It avoids blank paper on my pad.

Once the flood gates are breached, it flows down or across the page.

OK... that's with a bit of cheating.

I turned the page around from portrait to landscape.

For water only flows down.

This is water....what does water know?

Water instruments and flow....

I am using a paintbrush with integrated water reservoir. 

Without dabbing my brush into a source of water, I can adjust the flow on the page until the sodden paper starts to ripple.

I love that ripple effect.

Intensity of pigment collects in droplets.

I am reminded of building sandcastles and walls on the beach.

I am fascinated by the path of the sea flow.

I can watch for hours as the grains escape, the walls suddenly collapse...

I try mixing water-colour on the paper with digital brush work or digital filters.

I try superimposing images, tweaking the colours.

It never reaches that joy of water flow.

Rainy days...

I can remember hours spent gazing at raindrops collected on a pane.

I am  waiting for the moment of critical mass when gravity tips their path downwards.

I start over-loading the sketch-book page, ripping off surfaces of paper.

This is not really an aesthetic.

It is only really an act of wanton vandalism.

There is pleasure in destruction.

Paper waves break on the beach as surface layers are scuffed.

I am getting that feeling of child-time.

Child-time when minutes feel like days, weeks even.

I am feeling at peace with myself with the water.

Contented.

Finding ways to escape...

Sometimes it takes a few drawings from photos to open up worlds of imagination.

It's the gestures of approximating, of portraying of flicking ink up and down or around that releases me.

Capturing a photo....who is captured?

I have taken to ignoring pencil work.

Ink prevents me from fussing, from erasing, from correcting.

A line remains a line...one adapts to one's faulty lines....wrinkles...in time.

Lazyness.

My natural lazyness demands short-cuts.

Black, more black with my ink pen.

Why bother wasting the ink?



I go and stick the drawing in Bazaart and get instant black!

Black is black as they say....

I know that is a lie.

But it will do for now.

I am back in those caves in Yorkshire, squeezing through cracks, getting soaked.

I love trying to find the points of pressure against the rock.

Ink gives way to water colour strokes, to blotting with kitchen roll.

No time to be finnickety, a rough sketch.

I hate it when it becomes fussy.

I love it when I feel the flow.

I love getting down in the inky black, scribbling, scrabbling, getting messy.

Then my mind's eye imagines stalagmites.

There is no photo for this.

Stalagmites...There is no photo for this 

Stalagmites that dance in the darkness.