My children’s author days are over, but I’m not retiring. I’m now making drawings and videos about places, memories and the stories they tell.
If you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing, you can support me by subscribing to my YouTube channel and following or supporting me on Patreon.
This site will be closing down soon and the ShooRayner.com link will then point to my Patreon page.
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.
