There are so many good books for teaching now but to start off with I like to give a pupil some basic tools around nouns, verbs, numbers so that when they reach the text book, they already have the means of communicating.

Copies have arrived and can be bought direct from me or Pump Street Chocolate Shop. I attach two pages from the book – Inga at the pool and Aunty B at the hairdresser’s. I hope to start drawing and researching Inga’s next story in the autumn.

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The above is from a sketch I have just done on the final of five on-line lessons with the Royal Drawing School. We were looking at the colour blue which features often in my work. In particular the colours Indigo, Prussian Blue, Turquoise and Cerulean Blue. I decided to draw my vintage tea cup, the one which I use for my morning cup of tea.

After a long time away from regular drawing and painting, I am now eager to start working up ideas and sketches. I am drawn to interiors at the moment, the settings that tell us about the people who live in them.

A sketch I did today of me in my studio. Behind me, my precious box of coloured pencils, a Pelham puppet and a map of Rome. I look a bit perplexed but it is just because I was concentrating. The bowl of lemons was drawn this morning as part of a painting day with the Royal Drawing School which I really enjoyed.

This is my motto, has been since this all began. Below is a drawing I did a long time ago when my heart was broken and I felt all at sea.

How to stay steady when the world is in turmoil, when friends and neighbours are unwell. I start the day with really good tea and a bit of meditation. Then I do some yoga or go for a brisk walk. My online yoga class is run by someone who teaches yoga with rigour and encourages a clearing of the mind.

A friend of mine is into jigsaws. He went up into his attic and found a few.

I too have done some jigsaws and read a pile of books by Natalia Ginzburg, a favourite author of mine. It is rare that we have whole afternoons for reading and I am trying to make the best of this strange time, not worry about problems too big for me to solve.

I hope that you may stay steady and stand still for a while longer.

Since January, I have started teaching groups again which has been very energising. I am teaching a ten year-old ..

..and with the adult learners, I have been writing stories about a Capitano Belloni who drinks too much coffee and feels lonesome..

I am finding wonderful resources for teaching Italian, especially by Mondadori and Alma Edizioni. Finding myself with more time to read, I have bought a pile of books from (or about) Rome and Florence in the 1940s. Authors such as Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Levi, Elsa Morante. Also the work of Vasco Pratolini, suggested by the Alfani Bookshop which I came across in Florence when I visited last October. I have always been drawn to this period in writing, now even more so.

A few people  have been asking me where have I been since October, the date of my last post.  In terms of illustration, I was lucky enough to be the guest artist at the poetry festival in Aldeburgh in November. For three days, I sat and drew poets and listened to them reading. It was an immersion of the best kind. At the same time, I printed 50 copies of a draft of the childrens’ story on which I have been working on and off for 14 years…I gave a few away, sold a few in a shop in the village but felt it still wasn’t right. In March I met up with Pam Smy, my tutor on the masters course. We got to grips with what wasn’t working, including how I put paint on paper. I found that my colours got smudged into one another. So I put my favourite palettes to one side and switched to tubes of water colour instead. I spent the whole of lockdown re-painting pages (action list below).

 I hope that the story will be read as I really like the character of Inga. Feisty but soft. 

 

 

 

 

 

Where do the characters in our stories come from? On the course I did recently, we were encouraged to spend time watching people in public places and sketching them. Long hours were spent in a carpark near my home, hidden behind the steering wheel, surreptitiously drawing people who went in and out of the public toilets. It was interesting and honed my observational drawing skills but in general the people that land on my sketchbook page tend to be a fusion of people met in my lifetime. They sit in my subconscious and then come out when they are ready. The housekeeper above who featured in Sid’s story is definitely inspired by a lady whom I met through a cleaning job. As for Fnerk the Fisherman (also from Sid’s story) he comes more from my imagination. And then there’s Inga, the heroine of my current story. She is definitely inspired by the characters I liked as a child, in particular Pippi Longstocking, Heidi and William. I am really enjoying watching her develop because she is brave and playful.

There have been some moments of doubt over the winter as I continue to give up whole days to drawing pages that only I see with little money coming in. I am delighted that I have been offered the chance to tell Inga’s story to the local primary school children. It will be good to see what the children make of her.

Looking back at an earlier post about Inga’s story, I chose to use smooth watercolour paper and was concerned that I might not be able to get texture if I did so. But I have found other ways of bringing in interest. I like this picture of Inga at the pool. This is only a small part of the whole image but there is texture in two layers of paint (the water at her feet), in layering images in Photoshop (the tiled background) and in changing from watercolour to pencil (the wooden rail that Aunty B is holding). I am absolutely loving this story now and with only three doubles left to draw am not wanting it to end. Luckily Inga is already getting ready for her next adventure because I will feel odd when I am not drawing her story.