I’m pleased with the way this stay in Italy has started. Alreay I’ve managed two brief drawing sessions. Actually, I’m not entirely convinced that “drawing” is the right word. Looking at the surface of Lake Garda I was struck immediately by the range of subtle modulations between delicate colours across its surface. The seemed to merge into each other in such vague and borderless ways that for the life of me I couln’t say exactly what it was I was looking at.
The task only became more difficult when I got out my set of watercolour pencils and attempted (vainly) to reproduce a fraction of this subtlety on paper. It was, at this pragmatic level, a totally fruitless exercise, but I guess that the rest of this trip is going to involve sustained and repeated periods of just looking at colour, and asking myself, “What colour is that?