Sketch Friday 2nd July 2021

This week, I had my head in research and drawing and thinking about story. I didn't look up very often. The idea of mixing dramaturgy and illustration to find out what we (me and Matthew Bellwood working on his #PerfectWorld project) would find out about storytelling has been absolutely fascinating. It has also pushed me to my drawing limits. It's one thing to draw stuff to please yourself. It is another to satisfy oneself AND hit a brief. Wow. My respect for professional illustrators this week has gone even more sky-high than it was before. To be fair, it was pretty high already. Anyway, my friend ran a retreat last week and they relayed the gist of a beautiful conversation that came out of it, that they had with one of their participants, (I should say in a way that upheld that person's anonymity). The conversation was about how fear so often sits with us under the table. We hide it down there. But that doesn't make it go away. It just makes things worse. The key is to notice it's down there and then invite fear to sit at the table and let it kind of join in. I thought about that a lot this last few days. Let me tell you, when you have fucked up a lot of porpoise pictures and you have 2 that are ok, fear makes your hand wobble when you start applying paint. I had to keep saying to fear under the table 'will you PLEASE stop knocking my hand and come sit beside me and let me colour in this porpoise, already’. Fear said 'but I am scared you will fuck up that porpoise’ and I said 'I KNOW. But all the same, it would really REALLY help if you could just come sit with me.’ Fear did finally oblige. But don't get me started on how it went once we moved on to painting a rainbow bird with sunrise (to accompany a beautiful folk tale from Zimbabwe). Oh my god. Anyway. This week that's been mainly it. Just me, Matthew's stories, fear wobbling at my drawing hand, a lot of paint, ink, water, paper, my phone and glasses endlessly lost under a pile of mistakes, my cat Lara Darling 'helping' by reordering pens, brushes whatever, jeeze And my wife Janey, being endlessly kind and supportive while I swore and sweated. There was no time for the geese that were calling me to draw them. Never fear my beautiful geese chums, next week I shall return to you. That's it really. I am so glad I have done this experiment (thank you Matthew for asking), but I think I am looking FWD to going back to drawing being a much loved hobby (at least for a good while. Obvs never say never). I like wrangling words for myself and an audience, but I like having something creative in my life which is just for me. No fear. That's the news. Love to all xx #matthewbellwood #illustration #ink #watercolour #ink #gouache #sketch #paint #draw #porpoise