Hawkwood day #3

Settling in now, lots of thinking, some drawing, some walking along the wonderful local greenways. The writing is coming along as I do battle with the shape if it. How can I create a layout that works with the content and the 'both sides' theme? It's important that is isn't a timeline and doesn't have a beginning and an end. It must flow in and out, like the tides do. I feel like I am revisiting my thoughts about 'notness' – the condition of being unsure how to name something, so resorting to defining it by using words for things that is NOT. For example, it's not a timeline; a travel journal; a walking book; a history book or a novel.

The drawings are progressing slowly, partly because the light has been very variable today, and I need light to see subtle nuances of my mark making. And, if I am to be horribly honest, I have got a little frustrated by mapping out the drawings because they are the only ones that are heavily architectural. They are based on photos underneath the Severn Bridge at each end. I love a rich, expressive mark-making process, a gesture, a smear. Highly engineered objects, like this bridge, need straight lines, right angles, parallel sides. Oh how I struggle with these things. So I'm sharing this with you, just to prove that every artwork has blood or tears shed because of it. Nothing is ever easy.

I'm never very sure about the edge between being relaxed and being sleepy. Wherever the edge lies, I am reclining on it, swinging my foot nonchalantly, a dreamy look on my face, next to a smudge of charcoal. I think I could get to like this life.

Tomorrow the battle will begin again. Only two days left, all good so far.