Dusters

A week or two ago, I was writing about my schooldays misadventure of breaking a leg by slipping on ice; today my brother tells me that my sister-in-law Michelle has broken a leg and ended up in the same hospital as I did but she did it tripping on the raised rim of a dance floor last night.

Otter and Otter

In keeping with my recent resolve to bring a crafty element into my work, I sit down with a few sheets of children's activity paper (what we used to call sugar paper) and tear the shapes for this get well soon card for her. Michelle has never let me forget the time she and Bill bought a small pen and watercolour picture of an otter at a sneak preview of an exhibition I had at Walton Hall near Wakefield (the otter was the crest of the Waterton family, who built the hall, and there's still an otter there, carved above the main entrance).

'Do you mind if I still exhibit it?' I asked them.

Needless to say, on the opening night, someone else said they'd like to buy it, so I drew another one! Artists call this working in series. Bill and Michelle call it mass-producing their 'original' work of art!

The yellow dusters (above) appealed to me as a subject when I sat down to draw this evening.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk