twelve artists at life drawing this morning:) - A new model, Natalie, a dancer from Spain. Excellent air of solid determination and good will exuding from the group. Even the noisy sighers kept it to a minimum. Took chinese ink painting kit, stone, sticks and all which required explanations and so forth but not intrusively, BAD work though - very bad - the light touch of grace has fled from me. I have a tremor too. Dunno when that arrived or if its permanent, but my Grandma and Father had it (as well as type 2 diabetes which 2 brothers now have, ho hum)
Afternoon copying the Ripley scroll in fear and trembling. Scaled it up and then remembered that actually Im crap at that, its better to freehand it. Lots of my freehanding spent on correcting 'errors' in the scroll - size of Hermes Trig., shape of him - before realising that it had to be done as real because it compensated for hanging from a height. No other reason for the distortion. Good reason for it. Found that out anyway.
Longing to get paint onto canvas. Got a free week, almost, intend to use it though will trick it out with the Ripley copy.
One thing, after the siesta dream of a diminishing dog under the oaks in Weybridge, struck me about 'gifts' - things immovable in ones nature - and faithfulness- so, the retention, the faithfulness, of the 'real' nature of ones abilities. You can mess about but there is a basic ability. This was helpful to the process today. Diminished the fear, somewhat. I surveyed my young life as an artist to see what these gifts consisted of and in that process remembered the moment when I chose to never drink or take drugs while painting. I was 17, had been thrilled with a picture painting after smoking dope and woke up to find it was crap. Never did it again. Nowadays I dont smoke dope but I do drink alcohol and if Ive had a glass of wine for dinner I dont return to the studio. Stupid!! I calculate mistakes and here is a method of obtaining them bona fides, as it were. Wheres that bottle....
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