Still Life in Shed

I have taken up drawing half a century after my 'O' Level in Art.  On a warm summer day I remember cutting a spray of fragrant white mock orange blossom to carry in to my high school examination hall.  Flowers I could sketch with a modicum of success.  It helped that Miss G. our art teacher knew the appropriate technique.

Now I have started again inspired by a two hour free course at our local library put on by Lancashire Adult Learning.  I tried not to glance at my classmates who were making rapid and competent sketches of their mobile phones and spectacles.  I did attempt my glucose reader, assuming that this everyday shape would be easy.  My difficulty arose as much from my emotional reactions to my glucose levels as from my inability to free draw a rectangle.

Nothing daunted I have borrowed an excellent guide (which I am allowed to renew eight times) and purchased a sketch book and a set of artist's materials.  I have decided on the representation of everyday objects around me.  Into my third renewal and somewhere around page 7 of this exhaustive paperback I am still mastering rectangles, shading, proportion and perspective.  

It was ambitious to attempt a corner of the shed.  The flowerpots are reasonable - I have been practising ellipses; the timbers of the shed are recognisable; the spade looks as if it has been handled by one of Tolkien's dwarfs.  

I wish I had paid more attention to Miss G.  But I shall carry on with my roll call of the familiar which at present means more rectangles, namely the 1950s chairs that match our family dining table, the 1950s piano stool which we found in a charity shop near Much Hoole, and the red plastic kick stool passed on to us by Mrs F, a gardening customer, where I regularly stand to inspect my baking.

If I could distil two maxims from my sketching experience to date they would read:

'Draw what is there - not what isn't there.'  I have been particularly challenged by the finely turned wooden legs of 1950s furniture.

and

'Draw whatever endears itself to you'. 

Sometimes I am satisfied with a even one accurate minor detail like the bent corner on a paperback copy of 'The Lord of the Rings' - another perspective exercise where three books are piled aslant.

So it is fitting to let Tolkien have the last word on this.  If f you have never read it look up his short story; a meditation on creativity, life and art in 'Leaf by Niggle'.

Sparrow's nest

Sparrow populations are declining nationally so we are making a small contribution towards a healthier population.  They have nested under our front bay window and are feeding their fledglings on the aphids they have picked from our raspberries and blackcurrants.  As I have previously noted, we do not use pesticides.  Male and female birds take it in turns to fly up to the nest to a chorus of chirpings.  We are waiting for them to quit the nest before we finish cutting the front privet hedge and last week dissuaded our neighbour's gardener from taking power tools to the top.  (We love these charming creatures, but have still taken the precaution of netting our garden peas, given their taste for sweet pea shoots.)

We share our home with bumblebees who have nested in various crannies, and even last year with wasps.  June's RHS magazine features the wide variety of solitary wasps who act as an environmentally friendly pest control.  Ours were the social wasps (Vespula vulgaris).  I hope that wherever they have nested this year they also will be consuming aphids.  There were no ill effects - the wasps had to be dissuaded from entering the house towards the end of their life span but we were never stung.