A Drought in The Old Fort

Part of Friday was spent sitting in a graveyard waiting for it to rain. I’d been in a bit of a rush and had thrown an old set of my mum’s gouache paints into the bag, some brushes and the buckled graveyard sketchbook. I’d remembered a wee water holder and had filled my water bottle. But I’d left the water bottle at home and was now experiencing a rare moment in a week of torrential rain when I just needed it to rain enough to put some water in my pot. There was plenty of puddles on the main road but none in the grassy yard. I just couldn’t face the looks of passing drivers and pedestrians if I knelt on the roadside dipping my yoghurt pot in a drain - I just couldn’t. So I waited. And waited. And a few drops fell, slightly damping the sketchbook, wetting my palette which had some old paint on it, turning it to the colour of mud. Paint in tubes is thankfully wet by nature so I just squeezed some out on my paper and my fingers and squished it about, using the coloured pencils to draw a little. The graveyard was looking a little the worse for wear in the dull skies and weeds, though the grass was cut. The gateway structure into it was originally the entrance to the Old Fort William, back in the day when it really was a Fort and King William of Orange had a wee claim on the place. I thought I’d better try painting that, though I should know better as we’re talking angles and stuff. I could just say the dog got in the way…..

The week wasn’t shaping up to be a very creative one and I was mostly grabbing opportunities between other stuff. This was the easiest graveyard to get to and years ago I’d had a nice day in here drawing, but I definitely wasn’t feeling it today. Maybe it was the lack of rain.. As I was approaching the back exit to the graveyard, some young men walked past, staring over the wall at me as if I’d just crawled out of a crypt. Thankfully I wasn’t draining a puddle, but I had a moment of ‘seeing oorsel’s as ithers see us’.

To satisfy my new need to put paint onto a surface, I added some bright colours to my concertina sketchbook, which I could do at the dining room table as long as I remembered to wipe up the paint splashes from the floor, and the table, and the seat. The current warmer climate will get me back out into my Breaking Bad Studiovan, and not a moment too soon, before the layer of painted household surfaces get too thick.

Lacking graveyard get up and go, I spent Saturday printing on tissue paper from a gelli plate. This looks really easy in Youtube videos, however, I got in a messy fankle - thankfully I was doing in the Breaking Bad Studiovan due to global warming which saw Aboyne reach a record 18 degrees for January - not good.

I’d raided my sister’s haberdashery collection for old bits of lace from our Nana. She was a Corsetiere before she was married (1920’s) and I was thinking there would be all sorts of sexy lace, but of course corsets were a little more functional back in the day and mostly she had boxes of tape, and stays. However there were wee bits of treasure and my sister gave some very fluffy synthetic feathers (not my Nana’s) which thankfully she doesn’t want back as they are now stuck to a table in the van in a gloopy mess. But they made some nice prints…these will hopefully be glued onto paintings in a graveyardy kinda way - eventually. Torn to bits, of course.

A wee piece of Nana’s printed lace in my sketchbook.

Nana’s lace.