Woke up about 4am and knew I wasn't going to get back to sleep so I picked up my copy of Durer's complete engravings and woodcuts and began leafing through it. Ended up doing this little sketch.

There's no pleasure like drawing. You can become completely lost in it.

About this little hiatus:

I've been helping a friend get his essay/book online (He calls it an essay but I think the length and the thousand plus footnotes make it a book). Sorting out what he wants to do, setting up a site etc. has taken up a surprising amount of time.

The book, 'Don't Panic: The UFO Story' is available for free download here:
https://sites.google.com/site/donaldsoryu/

I think he was hoping reading it would make me a believer but... still a skeptic. I'll become a believer when I see something tangible.

We went downtown to our favourite magazine store this morning. It's a nice, mild day but with a chill from the dampness. The streets and sidewalks are covered with slush which makes walking treacherous and puddles on the street mean cars are splashing everyone so we picked up our magazines, hopped on a bus, and came home.

We've cranked up the heat and changed into our comfy hanging-around clothes and are now settled in nice and cosy with coffee and buttered hot cross buns and our magazines.

Aaaah.

[left: A demon from The Grandes Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry]

Occasionally, I find myself drawn to sketching from medieval illustrations and illuminated manuscripts. It is a form that seems very appropriate to the threats of flood, plague, famine, war, and the puritanical condemnation of self-indulgence that we are exposed to on a daily basis.

I have been listening to apocalyptic threats all of my life and have yet to see any come true. The predictable failure of these dire predictions to manifest themselves has never discouraged, and probably never will discourage, their fanatical misanthropic advocates.

It would be comical if these doomsayers hadn't managed to work themselves into positions of influence in which they can now force the expenditure of vast sums of money, both public and private, in pursuit of their various goals - money that will not be available to deal with real problems such as, for example, endemic diseases which kill millions of people every year in various regions of the world.

The most discouraging aspect of all of this is the inability, the failure, of otherwise intelligent people to see history repeating itself. Every new crisis is the real crisis. The failure of every previous crisis is forgotten and those who oppose or doubt the present crisis, or merely point to past experience, are condemned as fools and heretics.

Truly, we live in medieval times.

Happy New Year everyone!

It's a fairly mild day with the temperature sitting at 0.1C at noon under cloud with snow expected.

We didn't stay up to party last night, preferring to greet the new year with a gentle and relaxed start this morning. I did begin the day with drawing followed by exercising as planned but we forgot to have breakfast until after we had finished clearing the snow from the laneways. Oh well, baby-steps as we adopt our New Year's Resolutions. None of this radical all-at-once stuff.

Hope everyone has a great year!

The photo of this little Red Squirrel was taken through our kitchen window this morning.

Drawing all of the bones of the human body might be an interesting little project... one a day, every day... New Year's Resolution?

Probably be a good idea to get organised and not mix random bones, a newborn's skull, and bits of brain as in the pages shown on the right.

Of course it would mean starting everyday looking at photos of dissected bodies* ...but so many interesting shapes!

*Yes, photos. You think I keep a supply of fresh body parts around?

Photo: a little Chickadee at the feeder. A few days ago they wouldn't have come to the feeder while I was sitting outside but now they seem to be getting accustomed to me being nearby. I'm keeping the camera handy in the hope that I can get a shot of the little woodpecker who comes around now and then.

Worth reading: 'Table Talk - Essays on Men and Manners' by William Hazlitt (1778-1830). See in particular Essay I: On the Pleasure of Painting and Essay II: The Same Subject Continued.

"One is never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered."

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3020

I think this may be the best commentary on the act of drawing and painting that I've ever read.

It's odd that I often turn to drawing bones and skulls when I've been lax about drawing daily.

I've been lax about a lot of things lately... I think I had better make some New Year's Resolutions this year.

I love these little Moleskine sketchbooks. The paper surface is perfect for drawing... well, for the way I handle a pencil.