A sketch meet at Avebury had been scheduled for last weekend – it was cancelled but I’d wanted to spend some time drawing the stones so I thought, why not go anyway? The weather wasn’t exactly perfect (wind and drizzle forecast) but I decided to go with Sister Corita’s Rule 7: ‘The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something – it’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things’ and go anyway.
Initial sketches in graphite were fun but challenging as I struggled to get proportions of the standing stones right, stop the paper from blowing away in an increasingly strong breeze and not drop everything in the grass. Eventually I realised that it was also getting really drizzly. I sheltered under one of the stones, then made a run for it to the Henge Shop when the rain got too heavy. I spent a happy quarter of an hour checking out crystals and Tibetan prayer flags while the rain blew through.
Given my circulation only works as far as my elbows, my hands had got pretty cold. I went back out to the same spot as I wanted to do some charcoal drawing, but thought I’d do a blind continuous line drawing to get warmed up first. The other thing about drawing in a popular spot like Avebury is you get to chat to all sorts of interesting people too, and their dogs (including a very cute Akita puppy). Slows the drawing down, but definitely adds to the day. At least I had something to add to my pile of potential monotype material by the end of it.
Kate Chappell 