It was...

...a very hot day to me...I couldn't sit out in the garden because the sun was too hot...the app said it was only 16F, but no way could I sit in it beyond midday, so I retired to potting shed.

But the humidity was low, and I couldn't read because my eyes were too dry. So I was frustrated. Humidity was barely 30, and it is normally between 75 and 85.

Fell asleep in potting shed, only to be woken up by the sun burning my bare left foot...my foot had slipped out of the bed into the path of the sunlight.

So I decided today to do a quick sketch with felt tip brush pens, but it turned out anything but quick...took me a wasted couple of hours and is rubbish. The celendines look lovely in my back garden, but I cannot do them justice.This picture was actually too hard to do for my eyes, I couldn't focus to do it.

I so much prefer the encaustic wax painting with an iron, it is so free and easy to do.

But I have a lot of felt tip pens, and brush felt tip pens from years and years ago, and they are still useable, many of them brand new, so how can I use them?

I could throw them away, but it took me a long time to collect that variety of felt pens, and brush felt pens. I have many manga brush pens, and about a 100 Copic pens which my son brought back from Japan for me from Tokyo Hands I think the shop was called. So, I am not doing that. Maybe it would be the sensible thing to do, but a lot of effort went into that collection...a few cardboard boxes worth! When J was alive, he was also always buying me different felt-tips.

I had a look on You Tube just now, but no inspiration there.

I want to find a productive way of using all these pens in a free and easy manner. I am restricted by my past in that I know detailed line drawing and illustration from when I worked in the printing industry (lithography, screen printing, etching...all that kind of stuff...as well as on the printing presses) in the late 1960's. I know precise detailed work. That is fully ingrained in me. But that style of work is not applicable or attainable for me any more.

I need to learn to be a scribbly messy sketcher.

Maybe after a night's sleep, I might have some ideas for tomorrow.

So, this is my best effort today for my challenge to myself of a pic every day in 2017.

Sorry about the quality of the pic, but it was taken and posted with my old iPad.

The sun has gone down behind the houses, and it is now getting extremely chilly, so I need to go in...