London calling

From a 2014 trip to London:

 

My mind has been on London the past 1-2 days, because I was just at Denise’s house to figure out our accommodation for our upcoming short July trip, and I ended up putting together a list of Things for the trip. There is never enough time in London, that place which is such a lovely mix of the familiar and the new.

These two were drawn at some of my favourite spots in London. First at the grass patch outside the Tate Modern, across from St Paul’s Cathedral. The second in the National Gallery (quite possibly my favourite painting there, or at least in the top ten… a really dramatic, haunting scene).

It hasn’t really occurred to me before but maybe one of the things I like the most about travelling solo is the opportunities it affords to draw. I would say draw and write, except that I am pretty crap writer, and all I write are long and long ramblings about things I just can’t seem to figure out. I haven’t done much solo travel in the last few years, except a few days in Hong Kong last year, and I was being too wrapped up in my own head to do much drawing there. Maybe a day trip would be good for me. To the beach, to the beach.

Colours of the sky, and larch trees in autumn

Is it too early for a reflection-on-the-whole-year sort of post? Well I didn’t intend it, but I wanted to post a sketch from Mongolia, and I think reflection necessarily comes with thoughts of Mongolia.

(Again, kind of surprised that I still know how to use Photoshop, sort of.)

2016 is, as a whole, a pretty sucky year. Except that I went to Mongolia this year, and that may very well make up for the rest of the year. I’m not sure if I can put into written word the special-ness of that trip without being incoherent. I spent almost the entire trip fretting and praying that I would not fall off my horse and down the hills and to my death. And then I spent the following week back home feeling, in place of those said worries, not relief but hollowness. I think, maybe, that may just about sum it up and anyway I never intended this to be a wordy blog.

And then, of course, since Mongolia, a lot of things happened… both far away and closer to home.

Much more recently, I finally visited the new National Gallery of Singapore, with Mas. I really enjoyed Iskandar Jalil’s Kembara Tanah Liat collection. But the beauty of the shapes and the colours are quite difficult to capture in drawing. So on my journey home, I embarked on attempts at Georgette Chen instead:

out of shape/proportion.

still pretty out of proportion in the facial features, but I liked it enough to play around with.

I guess despite all the sucky things that happened this year, it has been a sobering year. And I am quite thankful for that.

As the Foo Fighters say, “It’s times like these / you learn to live again; It’s times like these / you give and give again”.

Or maybe that’s all bullshit, but I don’t want to stop trying.

cobbled walkways

From late 2011 (something not-so-old!):

 

Doodled when I first decided to join Tamie on her Euro trip, and when I had the brilliant idea of visiting London as well. I don’t think there are that many cobbled walkways in London anymore, or much of Western Europe, but somehow this is the image that sticks in my head of walking through European streets.