Welcome to my new blog - DRAWING THE LINE .As an artist I think about drawing a lot ! Sometimes I actually make marks on a page, sometimes the marks are expressive, sometimes the marks are made using conventional materials and sometimes the result is recogniseable ! Sometimes I don't even commit pen to paper at all - the work being simply a concept, a germ of an idea, that may grow into something quite frightening !
This is a cautionary, perhaps, frightening, tale of George the Greenhouse and his travels !
One fine day, not that many years ago, George's owner germinated a small seed and planted it outside her greenhouse. The seed, not unlike those seen in the photo, yes those innocent seed pods dangling from the lush growth above the greenhouse are the very same. For those of a horticultural bent, the tiny plant grew into the tree that we can see here and that same tree grew bigger and bigger, eventually bearing upon the front of the afore mentioned greenhouse. As you can detect the structure is constructed of thin aluminum extrusions that upon contact with an immoveable force - bend, smashing the glass roof into a sea of deadly shards !
You may be wondering what all this has to do with drawing !
This is really the story of how to move and draw with a greenhouse. Over the last few months I had given the subject of the move a lot of thought and was going to use stone age technology in the form of rollers and levers but brute strength won in the end and all that was necessary was a garden spade, a pick-axe and an assortment of rubble.
A trench was dug all around the outside and then another trench all around the inside. Next by inserting the spade under each of the corners, one at a time and gingerly levering the structure up I managed to get the greenhouse to part company with the ground. Needless to say breaking the spade - (something I have lots of experience of) was never far from my thoughts ! Whilst I have been cursing the Mimosa tree - it proved very useful as the final part of the operation required an immoveable object (the roots of the tree and pick-axe to lever the greenhouse in the desired direction. As it turned out I moved the greenhouse about 18 inches away from the tree and about a foot nearer the end of the garden to facilitate getting in through the door of the greenhouse without doing a sideways limbo dance !
I should add that all this took a little over an hour and left me needing a very large cup of tea !
The resulting drawing consisted of a trail across the ground that the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy would have been proud of ! The moral of the story is mighty oaks grow from acorns, huge Mimosa trees grow from tiny seeds and neither should be planted near green- houses !
Well thats all folks the next post might be on a more conventional aspect of drawing - but then again !
