Snail Shell

Finished the last of two new drawings on paper yesterday. One was a drawing of the house and business that used to be Budgewoi Smash Repairs. The whole thing is now just empty ground after the house was destroyed by fire and both buildings demolished. I have not photographed it yet so you can pretend you know what I am talking about if you care at all.

I started out being quite cavalier about the fact that I was attempting to record the icons of Budgewoi. This little seaside town did not seem like a place that would have anything you could call an icon. It is a place you pass without knowing it is there if you aren’t a resident or someone with some business here. Like a lot of things there are depths that are not evident to the casual observer. Let someone tell you a tract of bush is empty and then sit for a while without moving or making any sound. After a while the air is crowded with birds. Crickets sing to one another and cicadas trill. You may hear the crackling of leaves as a lizard or other tiny creature passes through. Their worlds are full!

I grew up in Castle Hill near Sydney for most of my life and every part of that town as it was then held memories and even ghosts in a sense. It became like that here at Budgewoi. At first it seemed confusing to stop and let the place surround me with it’s presence. What was I seeing? What was touching me emotionally and what held the gravity in this place? What things would people like to be reminded of or informed about? I have been here years now and some places and buildings touch me more than others. I know my view is jaded with familiarity and I am often missing the heart of things that should get attention from the kind of illustration I have been planning. A few places stand out. The old smash repairs and the house next door have a spirit of their own and a kind of potential visual majesty so I have drawn them together. That was the largest drawing of the type I have done so far.

Another idea I have been working on is a group of drawings with studies of shells (image at top left). The second and last image to be finished was the study of abandoned snail shells. I remember when I was a kid I used to be amazed at the beauty of the black and white studies of things in old science books. I really love getting close to things in nature and can never get enough of looking into the world of small living things.

The snail shells took several days of stopping and starting and fill most of an A3 sized sheet. I should not have been surprised to find my hands and fingers are suffering repetitive strain injuries with one of the finger bones actually changing shape slightly from all the tedious detail work. Now when I work the finger is padded and bandaged and the home-made gloves I use to stop my hands smudging the inks or pencil have morphed slightly to become protection for the hand that holds the pen.Hopefully the warmth will limit the aches in the joints from holding pens for long periods. I hope to do a few more of these and mount them up. Perhaps there is a cafe around the place who will let me hang them. They should look excellent when framed.

On the day after a drawing there is a wave of chronic fatigue symptoms setting in. I feel as though my feet are made of clay and I have been sucking on a bong. My head drifts and just wants to slump on my neck. I can’t get anything going and suffer long periods of confusion. This blog entry uses the last of my energy for today and so is short although it feels as though I have wrought the chapter of a book here! If I had any sense and could relax during those they would be quite restful and a good way to use up the time until I could function again. Tomorrow will probably be the same so the best thing to do will be to read and sleep and maybe sit a while in the sun. The day after tomorrow will still see the effects. Being disabled and ill makes it easy to become exhausted even with simple day to day tasks so extra things like drawing have to be planned and the costs of the extra effort accepted gracefully. It is worth it to be making images! I think I have said that before, yawn, oh well!

Oh good grief. now I know I am tired and a little confused. I already covered most of this page in another entry a few weeks back. I could have been asleep now!