I’m learning to draw. Again. Properly. With patience – and patience isn’t something that comes to me naturally. But this year is all about patience. I have an exceptionally good role model; my husband is the embodiment of patience. I am learning violin, after all.

Returning to the subject at hand – drawing – my teacher is Ken Raffe, who is also my jewellery teacher. A hard but fair task master. He has the ability to point out sketched oddities from across the room with a cry of, “is his name Isaiah? ‘Cause one ‘eye’s higher’ than the other!”

I’m really enjoying being in the main studio on a Saturday morning with the other artists and being part of the myriad conversations we segue into and out of as we all work on our projects. And I’m enjoying what my sister calls the ‘directness’ of drawing – like poetry, it’s readily available. The only materials needed are your paper and a pencil.
I love my fire and silver, but sometimes I want to immediately catch that ‘something’ I’m feeling.

So, here are the exercises from the last two weeks. I will no doubt cringe at these in years to come (as I will at much of my poetry, I’m sure), but in both cases it is about the learning and creating, not the creation. Either way, I’m enjoying myself.