• Mrs Rayner and I went to the canal to observe the eclipse as there would have been trees in the way in our garden.

    We had a bit of an experience and I chided myself for not having my sketchbook with me to record events.

    But do you need the sketchbook? Would you miss being in the story if you were busy sketching it?

    Can you record the event from memory when you get home?

    What is this?

    Reportage?

    Storytelling?

    Illustration?

    Something new?

    Something Hybrid?

  • We have been having a lot of heatwaves this summer. It’s been unusually hot.

    Having built my new studio in the spring the heat has kept me out of it for most of the summer.

    I thought I’d go down to the canal with my sketchbook and draw the geese. There have been a lot of goslings this year.

    It was so bright and hot. The geese were a little disinterested and they don’t want to sit still and let you draw them. I particularly got their white chests wrong, happily filling them in with chestnut brown. They had gone when I looked up for reference.

    The mind and memory can play tricks. That’s something I’m exploring in my drawing at the moment.

    I was soon distratced by the towpath goings on. Dogs, visitors arriving for canal barge trips and the smell of coffee drifting over from the canal.

    The heat was too much and the light too bright. Time to go home and make some coffee of my ow, sit down and think about what I’d drawn.

    Did I go to draw the geese or was I really more interested in the peple and the goings on?

    I think It’s all of it. And the stories of everyday life going on, unnoticed until you take out your sketchbook and pay attention.

  • We moved from The Forest, where I knew the trees and their varieties, to the beautiful Derwent valley. The noticeable change for me was in the varieties of trees.

    There are a lot of Sycamore. Members of the Acer/Maple family, they are everywhere. One book on local history referred to them as “the Derbyshire weed.”

    In the spring a small forest began to grow on my garage roof. There’s a sycamore close by and the seeds come twirling down and find the gravel on the roof a perfect seed bed. They like my flower beds too.

    I’ve been watching the seeds form this year and have noticed a huge variety in shape and size and began collecting them on walks.

    I’ve installed a nature table in my new studio, where I spread them out and look more closely.

    I was impressed by the twirling motion one sunny lunchtime, until I realised the twirlers were lime seeds from the huge trees across from us, and not sycamore.

    I compared the two seeds by throwing them into the air. The lime twirled beautifully. The sycamore dropped like a stone.

    I split the sycamore in two halves and threw them in the air. Off they went, helicoptering as f designed by da Vinci. Sycamore wings don’t fly as a pair. but individual seeds do – they helicopter.

    It’s a tiny observation in the great scheme of things, but for me there is the more important lesson about attention.

    The more you pay attention, the more you learn and understand.

    Pay attention.

    Attention is the most profitable resource on the planet these days. Google, Meta, AI and all the major platforms have built their fortunes by harvesting your attention.

    You have only so much attention to give and the more it is taken away, the less you learn and understand.

    So, turn off your phone and go and pay attention to something small that you’ve never considered before. You’ll learn and understand a lot more than you will by doomscrolling on instagram for a couple of hours.

    You can watch this video without the distractions of adverts and see full size scans of the sketches when you join me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ShooRayner/posts/what-can-we-from-166271982