March Drawings

Hello friends and strangers,

I have a growing collection of plants on the window sill in the kitchen. Somehow they stay alive despite (or maybe because of?) my slightly neglectful watering. One of the plants is an Aloe Vera which has been growing happily over the last 6 years and seems pretty independent. I was extremely surprised when, at the end of December, it started growing a flower. The internet revealed to me that Aloe Vera plants occasionally flower indoors, but it takes quite specific growing conditions and it's apparently difficult to achieve on purpose. Well, I've done it by accident! I have watched the flower buds appear and then open over the last two months - it's lovely, though it makes me sad to think that this plant expended so much energy to make a beautiful flower that no insect is going to make use of.

Similiar to the collection of strange plants I have a mixture of drawings for this newsletter. Firstly, a fun comic exercise I learned from Lynda Barry's Making Comics. It's extremely simple: you pick an object and draw it for a set amount of time, and then shorten that time - e.g. one minute, 30 seconds, 15 seconds, 5 seconds. A little bit like poses in life drawing, except you're drawing from memory. I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did! Here are some of my results.

Chicken

House on Fire

Cat

Skeleton

I enjoyed the 5-second skeleton one so much I did it three times, as you can see.

What I found most interesting about this exercise is that when you view the drawings together, they seem to form a wordless narrative - or should I say, a comic? Try it out if you fancy. It is amazing how we are able to reduce pretty much anything to its very basics and yet retain its character.

Next up, not just one but two horse-related drawings.

Playing Dungeons and Dragons on Wednesday night I misspoke and declared, much to the delight of the room, that the end of the world was neigh, rather than nigh. This begged for a drawing.

I will not take credit for this fantastic phrase, Sarah came up with it. Say it out loud. It feels very good to say. It can also be inserted into the song "Rhinestone Cowboy" very easily ("I'm a thoroughbread nighmare/I'm a horse riding out in a star-sprangled rodeo").

Thanks for reading,

L x