Drawing out the storm...
... and a teeny tiny Edinburgh.
I’m sitting writing this at my window desk as Storm Eowyn starts to build outside. The wind is whistling down the chimney and rain is hitting the window - which actually feels like a very normal Edinburgh winter morning. Yet they tell us this will be a special storm. A big one. Everything is cancelled and closed and we’ve all been told to stay home. I was on a busy train last night between Glasgow and Edinburgh when the first wave of these alerts came through and dramatic alarms that I’d never heard a phone make started alarming everybody all over the carriage. No one knew what they were. And they came in waves. Then everyone saw they had a ‘danger to life’ message from the government on their phones. I felt like we were at the start of a film where we were all the people who didn’t know yet how bad things were to come - but the audience did. I was with a few fellow picture book makers and we agreed that at least we were the main characters so we’d probably be fine.
The first weeks of this new year of ours has been quite dramatic and feels a little bit like that moment on the train. The big picture can feel overwhelmingly dystopian and the future very uncertain (even if it always is). But at the same time, when I tune into the details of my very lucky local world, there is so much beauty and so much magic. Absolutely everywhere. The wonderful Maria Popova, author of the Marginalian wrote in her newsletter this week two things that I just loved.
The first:
“Paying conscious attention, then, is our primary instrument of loving the world".
And the second:
“It may be that pausing to look is indeed our moral obligation to the universe”.
Although I know that storms can cause a lot of damage to life and trees and structures I also love them. For a moment the world that is bigger than our human lives, demands that we notice it. Storms can be unifying too. There is a communal noticing of something atmospheric, large and amorphous. Something bigger than our own little problems, or errands, or worries. When the wind blows extra wildly and the rain pours down and snow covers the earth, normal life is disrupted and we all suddenly notice the trees and the air, and if we venture out, or lose power and our heating, the feeling of our bodies in the wild.
So, I chose to take comfort then in embracing the idea that we are the leading characters in our story (and thus have some agency and power) and also, that in disruption of the norms (even the ones we like) there can be forced observation and a noticing of all the small things that make being alive absolutely wondrous.
It is now the morning after the storm and I am back by the window where the outside world is alternating between snow and sleet. Most things in my view seemed to have survived the gales. Except our back fence. The plants that had been holding it up have fallen into the parking lot on the other side. And the fence is now in pieces.
It seems I couldn’t concentrate writing in the company of such a storm. I kept being distracted by the deep earthy booms as the wind hurled itself into our old stone tenement. I kept getting up to boil more water and make sure I had tea in case we lost power (priorities!) and I kept stopping to draw the wind (which I really wanted to be out in the midst of).
I drew it in a similar way to a process that I’ve really been enjoying and embraced over winter. When I first moved to this city three years ago, I was so annoyed when I took what had been my usual drawing kit - my watercolour and acrylic paints and pencils - out into the streets to capture the beautiful world around, and my process didn’t work. If I used a wet medium first, like the paint, and then wanted to draw on top of it with pencil, it was just impossible. The air was so wet that nothing ever dried enough to work on top of. I decided at some point last year that I’d tear up most of my picture book paintings into small pieces and use their backs. Every now and then I tear up a heap and then cover the backs in blobs of ink and paint and then shove them in my sketchbook or leave them in piles around the living room (to Dave’s delight), ready for use.
Even though I started this process to use up nice paper that was lying around and also find a method that meant I could have finished coloured pieces drawn whilst sitting outside in cold damp weather, it has brought me so much more joy than I anticipated.
Working so small feels so freeing. And the finished tiny pictures feel weirdly exciting. I’ve found a great thrill in sitting on the streets in front of a very complicated busy world and turning its overwhelming largeness into something tiny and neat. And having so many little tiny pieces of paper ready to go feels exciting. The first step for each drawing is such a happy one - looking at all the different teeny tiny pieces of paper and choosing the right one for that moment - feels like such an easy beginning. No white paper overwhelm.
I have made most of these pictures with another wonderful picture book maker and lover of sitting in cold stony streets - Phoebe Roze. And I think this has added to the joy and also to the wonder of working so small. I am useless at talking and drawing. Especially while I conceive of the composition and get the basics down. But when there’s already ink on the paper and there’s such a small bit of paper to fill, I can usually still manage to make it work.
I’ve realised that most of my background inky blobs were a warm colour - lots of pinks and browns and yellows. And so it gives most of these a glorious warmth. Which was completely unlike it felt to make the picture. I’ve made ones with blue backgrounds (like the storm above) and there are some above also with green but for some reason the cool colours are harder to make something good out of. I’m not sure why. Sometimes after getting too cold, Phoebe and I would give in And find a much warmer cafe - we even found a lovely art deco one with with a fire.
The snow/sleet combo is continuing outside. White blobs sometimes drifting down, floating, other times longer and thinner and hurtling with more oomph at the ground. Nothing white is settling like it did in December when we had one of those glorious and seemingly rare Edinburgh days when snow sat on the city - I wish it lasted for months.
In addition to the beautiful reduction of colours into almost black and white that is brought by snow to the city on a day where the sun is hidden, I also adore the enhanced contrast in light between the warmth inside, or yellow lighting and the bluer cold that is out.
So I tried to capture this at home in a few more tiny pieces.
I am addicted to making these teeny tiny pieces. I have so many more. Someone on here said they’re like a picture in a puddle. I really like that.
I might not have much power over what the billionaires that have come to rule our beautiful world want to do with their wealth, but I do have complete control over what I chose to give my attention. Amongst the big picture I am going to make sure I don’t forget the teeny tiny pictures where I get to stop and notice the beauty of all the kinds of storms that rock our lives. I get to make the gigantic complicated beautiful details of this city, my current home, into tiny two dimensional drawings that celebrate a moment of its magic. I even get to share time and do this with others. And then share it with anyone who wants to look. I am going to draw my way through the inevitable storms that are already here and the unknown ones ahead. And then I’m going to sit and drink tea with people, or if at that moment I can’t find anyone to drink tea with, draw it instead.
I loved this post! I used to live in Edinburgh and seeing your tiny pictures so beautifully capture those timeless streets with their constant stream of people made me nostalgic and happy. I enjoy your message of finding joy in uncertain times not by starting fresh, but by building on what you've got and focusing on the details like a fuzzy blue sweater. Thank you!
I very much enjoyed reading your post and seeing your beautiful little paintings. I found it interesting that you in Scotland have the same worries about where the power and greed in government will take us, despite us having different "powers that be".