I’ve recently discovered in a gallery a Penguin book called London: You Are Beautiful (an artist’s year) which is a book filled with live drawing sketches of London by David Gentleman. I felt pleasure, mixed with envy. I thought that that was exactly what I should have done for this year. I blamed myself for being unconsistent, unrigourous and lazy. After some minutes, I showed a little bit of self-compassion and thought that it was not that easy due to the weather. Knowing it was not a proper excuse (if I had done one scene each day it wasn’t raining and over 15ºC, probably I’ll have half of the book) I kept on thinking that maybe David has done that but he has been paid in advance, at least one half, and that I’d do it happily if I was as lucky as him. Well, I have a lot of excuses, which make me feel less guilty but still are not satisfying. Therefore, I’m starting to draw my artist year through the nicest places I’ve discovered in this London year. The main difference is that given that I have no time and no oyster money enough, I’m drawing by heart. I hope I can do a bunch of them, enough to show something decent at the end of the course. Which ends in a pair of weeks. I like challenges, especially those that I already know I cannot accomplish.
