Saturday 9th April - Drawing again - playing the piano again

 I'm back to drawing every day again - just a small picture to record a moment of the day. I was given a small sketchbook a couple of years ago, about 5" by 8" at a rough guess, with space to draw two sketches on every page to create a visual journal.

I made SUCH a hash of the first few pages that I put the book away. However, I decided to cut the first few pages out and start again;

This is after a family zoom discussing a forth-coming mad-cap trip to Cornwall that some are going on later this year;

My cold frame sits on a battered garden table to I can reach into it without bending down. I planted up quite a few pots with tulips, crocuses and daffodils last Autumn and am now seeing the rewards of that cold November afternoon. 

We had another small family zoom; just us, son and daughter. Daughter has only just moved into her new flat so the walls are still bare.  

The pictures for the 6th and 7th April will have to wait, as I roughly sketched the designs on the postcard project cloth, which has not yet been posted.

I tend to do the drawing when we have gone to bed, before I write the daily page in my diary of events, thoughts, happening of the day. I have a packet of water-colouring pencils, a brush, a tiny bottle of water to activate the pencils and a cloth for minor disasters by the bed. I need a light touch with the water; firstly because the paper is thin, and secondly because the pen is my ordinary fountain pen with washable blue ink!

I broke my Lent Resolution again the other day, ordering a book by Andrew Eales called 'How to Practise Music'. My excuse is that I have several students who are at the point of needing to know how to practise in a more thoughtful, focussed way, and this book seemed like an excellent summary. I'm only partway through, but it has inspired me to get started again.

I'm playing 'In the Bay' as an 'easy win', and exercise in memorising, the Chopin Nocturne 'for work' as I am teaching it but can't really play it (1) and the Impromptu is an old friend that I first played over 40 years ago.  

Studying the Chopin today was useful; I emailed this photo to a student to advise on playing an awkward bar in the LH (by the yellow sticker) a misprint (those red annotations) and a suggested fingering change (heavy pencil markings). "If a picture paints a thousand words..."

We'll see how this goes - the number of times I've tried to get a daily practice routing going is beyond counting.

  

Noah's Ark;

yesterday, leopards 

"can leopards change their spots?" Jeremiah 13 23

Today, gazelles or wild does

"I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or wild does:

do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!"     excellent advice from Song of Songs, 2:7

Not many windows left.