Six Bells and Lichens

Not a drawing today, but I bought a couple of small frames from a charity shop to display pictures I bought on Ebay, so just showing how I mounted them using strips of fabric. I think the illustration of lichens had been simply cut out of a book. Someone must have access to an industrial book-cutting guillotine, because they have plenty more pages for sale. I've used an electric guillotine once before when trying out book-binding, and they can cut through whole books like cheese! The chopping occurs in a safely encased area, and you have to press two pads at once to activate the blade, so it's impossible to leave a hand somewhere inconvenient...

The other picture is a tonal etching print depicting the side of a weather boarded house on Six Bells Lane in Sevenoaks. I bought it for its spooky but homely atmosphere, and it's nice to have a snapshot from the past. There's now a big traffic sign in front of the actual house, but it seems unchanged otherwise.

Watched "I Hired a Contract Killer" by Aki Kaurismäki, set in London this time. Like his other films, the world it's set in seems to be stuck in the 1970s, despite it being 1990 (as the skyline gives away). Most of the action happens in a depopulated-seeming East End, and the film offers a commentary on simultaneous neglect and disruptive restructuring, as it effects both places and people. One of the settings is even unexpectedly demolished during the course of the film.

It's interesting to see the area that has changed so dramatically, partly because my own granddad grew up in Poplar. His great grandparents (2 out of my 32 total great great great grandparents that is) originally moved there in the 1870s.