Today I pulled out my A4 sketchbook and plastered some gesso onto some pages. They probably don’t need the gesso for what I planned to do, but spreading gesso on a page is as much of a ritual and a signal as it is a specific requirement. It tells you something is happening.
Even though I have kept my toe in with a daily sketch, I feel like I have been far away from my creativity, and my practise, and it felt so good just sliding that sketchbook off the shelf and opening it. That feeling was, of course, accompanied with a feeling of dread that I have forgotten how to do this, and may be I have, because when I started painting, back in my usual space, I felt like something had shifted, or moved on, or changed.
I don’t know what it is, or if it is just a momentary feeling, part of my resettling, but it made me think about composting, and the way creativity does composting – when you take a break, or do other things, and your creativity is assimilating and breaking down, and reforming things in the deep dark.
I used some reference photos that were lying on my desk, not thinking too much, just giving myself something to look at, to sketch, and that’s where I felt the connection between my way of seeing and my hand and brush felt different, better, more relaxed.
That’s when practise pays off, when the mediocre sketches, or the unfinished pages, and the creative sessions that felt like a slog, have given way to a bit of a moment.
It’s like all those years ago when I was doing ballet training, and classes would be awful, and painful, and I would question the point, and then one day the hours and hours would coagulate, and something that hadn’t been working would just suddenly come together. Of course it wasn’t sudden, it was the result of practise.
I sing the praises of my cheap, shitty brushes, as usual.
Til the morn,
Suzanne
143/200
Thrummie Bizzum 
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