A holiday in seven sketches

Dartmoor, terrible drawings and dinner in IKEA

The smell of sea air and the kronk of a raven, confidently riding the clifftop gusts. The calling of wildness, and the calling of one’s home. What is home? Abingdon? I used to come up to from  Southampton to Abingdon to stay with friends here; it was random and very fortuitous that my husband got a job here in Abingdon, but it took me a good two years before I could past the sign to Southampton without confusion. That sign had always meant we were going home, but now we were already home. I’ve lived in many places.

I’ve not lived in Devon, but there’s something about the wildness Dartmoor that draws me in. The dark rivers, stained with the wilderness are a lifetime away from the lazy meanderings of the Thames; they bubbling with energy, jumping boulders, cascading down the sides of steep valleys. Magic hangs in mossy crevices in wind stunted woodlands on remote moors. I like my home, but Oxfordshire has been inhabited, used and tamed for millennia, farmed into submission. It’s harder to find the magic. It’s been ploughed deep into the ground. We don’t have steep valleys or moors or granite tors to protect us from human habitation. It is where I live, but secretly, the West Country is my home too. We visit about three times a year because various family are scattered around Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

What I am trying to say is there is not much of a newsletter today because we decided to pop down to Devon (and Cornwall) for a couple of days, and I’ve just got back and have important things to do like lounging around in bed reading. It’s not that I don’t prioritise you, my dear substack readers, but I have not had enough time to do important things recently (like lounging and reading) because of all the walking and swimming and sketching I have been doing.

Workings

When I first got this little sketchbook I was afraid to use it because I thought that it had very few pages and it would get used up far too quickly. This did not happen, mostly because I hardly ever took it out. In my mind, I would go out sketching with big bag of kit and sit for hours creating tremendous works of art. That did not happen. There are many reasons, and they are not interesting. They do not matter. What matters is I realised how long I had this little book, and it was mostly empty, and as a creative person, I had to find creative solutions those problems to fill it.

Earlier this year, as some of you will know, I made a tiny sketch kit and put it in my bag. It is so small that it lives there all the time, so when we have lunch, or the boys want to climb rocks,or rest, or poke little animals in the stream, I can amuse myself. In fact, the boys often ask me now if I want to stop and sketch; this is partly because we went to Kurt Jackson’s gallery again, and they are hopeful that I will be able to sell one for £50,000

I will not be selling paintings for £50,000, or anything, because they are terrible. I would prefer it if they were stunning, but I have a pencil, one paintbrush and a few paints. I have to mostly accept they cannot ever be a proper finished work, which is good. When you know they will be terrible, there is no pressure to produce something good. Just have fun. Get some colours down because the camera never gets the colours right, and the sensors can’t detect the way a place feels to you.

22.10.24 View from the holiday home.

I did this indoors so you’d think it would be OK, but I forgot to bring much more than my micro sketch kit and also, I forgot that I didn’t have to draw on every bit of page, and I didn’t have to draw everything. Cameras have to take in everything, but I can focus in on the thing that interests me, which I forgot. You can barely see it. So I found this picture a bit disappointing even for a terrible sketch.

23.10.24

1) Creeping fog that shifts and changes on a misty morning.

I like this one much more although fog that shifts and changes is impossible to sketch because it keeps shifting and changing. It has vibes of the experience of shifting and changing fog though, which is the best I could do.

2) Meldon reservoir colours.

A record of colours done in a rush over lunch. Fully intended to finish it off a bit when I got home which clearly didn’t happen. Stunning colours though, will use this as a reference at a later date

3) Black-a-tor Copse.

Black-a-tor copse is mostly mossy boulders and wizened trees next to a black river. Actually like this one. Also proves that you can be in the most remote place quietly drawing and someone will still find you and start asking you what you’re drawing. Moss. Obviously. I am drawing moss. It is green. I am in a world of green. Are you green? Then please leave. You are spoiling my world of green.

24.10.24 Grey, grey grey with a trace of blue, Bucks Mills.

We actually spent most of the day on a very pleasant beach where I did no sketching because we were busy. I did take a lot of the beach home with me to draw at a later date though. This is my son dressed in a grey coat with blue jeans tormenting some limpets on a beach that is largely grey and blue. I thought it was alright, my son didn’t. I said I would make him pay for saying that, and he said he would definitely not pay for this. Rude.

25.10.24 I am glad I did not wear a dress, Haytor Rocks.

It was very windy. I have never needed a clip before but I understand now why sketch kits come with one. My pages were flapping around everywhere because I had lost the clip. The boys are on top of the Tor. I do not have a problem with climbing up rocks but I do have a problem climbing down them, so I didn’t go to the top, but I didn’t let that stop me buying a Haytor Rocks sew on patch for my bag to commemorate the occasion though. I forgot to take a photo so I took this in the carpark later which is a great idea because the rock is so far away you can’t really see any detail to know how accurate the drawing is.

25.10.24 Where is my husband? (At the top of Hound Tor, that’s where)

It was called ‘where is my arsehole husband’, but that seemed unfair because he did take us on a nice holiday. Having said that, he made us walk too far up and down too many hills when we would’ve actually liked some dinner. It was nearly 6pm when he said he was just going to get out and have a look at Hound Tor; moments later we later saw him running up that hill like he’d made a deal with god. It was sunset, and I experimented with using washes to get the colour of the sun on the rocks. Didn’t go as expected, but I learnt some stuff.

Because of this we got the Exeter services at 7pm and the entire place looked like it had been ravaged by locusts. My son threatened to explode and take out anyone near him if we suggested any form of sustenance that came between a bread product, claiming all sandwiches, wraps and burgers to be a snack and he needed real food. We ended up eating in IKEA just before closing. Jim had to pay the IKEA plant tax for his crimes; I own a nice new sansevieria moonshine potted plant.

I have about six pages left in this sketchbook now, I can’t wait to get a new one.

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