Creating My Own Layers

Showing up is a wee bit harder than I’d hoped it would be. It’s only fun when you think that you’ll eventually make a picture you like and then you are reminded that your drawing skills are quite shocking. However, creating something out of that sketch that at least means somethiing to me is my main aim.

I went back to the old graveyard in Glen Nevis to see if a dry day made things any easier. Nope - the likelihood is that the unexpected effects of the rain helped. Also, a lack of rain brought a little more activity to the glen and the dog got all territorial and did his rotweiller impression to a very nice man who’d come to cut up the large tree that had blown over a recently rebuilt dry stane wall. We chatted across the wall until my phone sounded from in amongst the debris of sketchbook and paints. The Woodsman said that it was a pity to spoil the peace of the old graveyard with such a modern thing as a mobile phone - as he pulled the cord on his chainsaw.

Dearie me. This time I’d stuck Sir Walter Scott onto the paper before I left home. I thought this might help me feel more creative and inspire a sense of history. I was glad the Woodsman was more interested in carving up the tree than seeing what I was painting. It’s always dangerous to look over someone’s shoulder as you kinda feel you have to make some kind of comment. However, I’m definitely feeling that it’s worth starting with something from out and about and then labouring over it in comfort back home.

The gravestones do all lean over, but I think I also had my head at an angle!!

As a hoarder, I don’t throw much away, so I found the front page of the sketch pad that I’d used as a palette the last time I was at this graveyard andI tore that up and stuck bits down. This added some modern history.

I wish I could paint so freely on paper as the paint on my palette implies. Something to work on….