Baileys and Blackthornes

I don't think my picture will make you cry but it reminded me of Ruskin and elements of drawing I'm reading it at the moment and one of the many exercises is to draw the branches of a tree in winter - the shapes between - you don't have to do the tiny twiggy bits just the main structures.  I'm thinking of learning to draw I think Ruskin's tutorials will probably work - like the other texts we have read The work of iron in nature, art and policy and The Nature of Gothic most things in the book are a spiritual metaphor for our relationship as people to the world outside ourselves.  Drawing is used as a way of seeing or rather a process to train ourselves to see better - rather than the act of producing a thing- a drawing. It's like Nabeel Hamdi said at our recent small change conference drawing as a verb and not a noun.  The nice thing about the book so far is that it really sticks to this as an end in itself - it does not aim to develop you to a point where you can take - the next step - and become an artists proper it is just help to train you to see.  Ruskin of course has an opinion on proper artists and their roles and what we can learn from them but elements of drawing is not about the copying of anything it's not mimetic in the traditional sense it's all about the process of seeing things clearer.  It reminds me of a scene in the Mighty Booch where a character called Old Greg really loves Baileys and draws loads of pictures of it at the end of the sketch he shows a water colour of Baileys really close up it's just a piece of paper painted cream he says something like "I drew this- that's as close as you can get to baileys without your eyes getting wet." I think this is what Ruskin is trying to encourage us to do - get our eyes wet and not with the tears of the Blackthorn drawing.

Anyway I was just trying to find the picture of the Blackthorn drawing we saw in the collection and it wasn't anywhere online so I looked on my phone. I had only 3 pictures from the visit all of a small brass hinge on the box of Turner prints with a little brass clip which flipped out to rest prints on for viewing.

My camera was set on video so I have a 3 second video clip of the hinge.  I'm pleased with this but also wonder why I didn't just capture some images for the blog - giant books of the dead and such.  Perhaps we were overwhelmed.  Good we can tell Louise that the image of the pelican is mounted too close and there is at least 7mm of black around the edge - probably a reused mount but I liked the fact it's beak and arse met the edges of the mount at a tangent.

It feels like I have far to much to say today. I liked the bit where you said that the collection had 'Rubbed off" on Louse the curator - in the 8 years of sorting and cataloging she like Old Greg had got so close to it that her eyes have got wet.

At our small change day I liked talking to Saleema about visiting Ruskin's Museum in Meersbrook, 65 years ago - She has spent a life trying to make a difference in our city - from permaculture to transition towns - from scrapstores to  developing community language projects - very rarely paid always fully committed - perhaps she is one of Ruskins children.  When asked what her favourite thing was in the museum she said "Holding the minerals" perhaps it is the iron pirite that have made her moral and Ruskin was right.  Hey I'm welling up a bit - people make me cry not art - I will just tell the kids I've been drawing Baileys -up close.