Homeward, the Long Way
August 11, 2026
Six weeks, four countries, one full camera. The gate at Charles de Gaulle, a plane pointed at Istanbul, and the long hop home to the studio. Last post from the road.
Thursday had two halves. I gave you the old town at Chiavenna. This is what happened either side of it, and the second half is the part that actually matters.
Found this on the way back. A crow, hooded crow I think, going by the grey waistcoat, sitting on a stack of flat stones somebody has built into a chimney cap. And behind it the whole side of a mountain.
What gets me is the order of it. The bird is the smallest thing in the frame and it wins, easily. Not because it is important but because it is the only thing that could move. Everything else has been there for a hundred years or a hundred thousand, and one grey bird the size of my fist takes the whole picture off them.
File that under things I need to remember when I put a figure in a landscape.
Then home, and the real work.
The plan for today said five hours drawing from the week’s photographs and for once I did what the plan said. This came out of it.
All biro, so nothing can be taken back. You can see me working out the shoulder three times over and just leaving the wrong ones in. That used to bother me. It does not now. The pen going round twice tells you I was not sure, and being not sure is most of what drawing is.
And he is from behind, which I have only just noticed I do constantly.
Same again. Two of them stopped with their bikes, and I am behind them at a polite distance like some sort of pen wielding stalker.
Here is why, and I only worked it out sitting at that table. A face makes people look at the face. The second you put eyes on a figure, everything else in the drawing is furniture. Turn them round and the viewer has nothing to read except how the weight is sitting, which shoulder is carrying the bag, whether the knees are locked.
Backs are honest. Faces perform.
Five hours and three pages. Not fast. But I came on this trip to gather subject matter and I have been so busy gathering that I nearly forgot the point of it, which is to sit down eventually and turn the pile into line.
Tomorrow, Como and a meeting about printing on silk. Which means the pile grows again.
Six weeks, four countries, one full camera. The gate at Charles de Gaulle, a plane pointed at Istanbul, and the long hop home to the studio. Last post from the road.
Monday’s list said one word: Sennelier. The paint shop on the quay that has been serving artists since 1887. On the way there the Left Bank gave me green glass bubbles, a wall of steel cyclists, and an entire film crew in the Palais-Royal.
Last full day in Paris, so I got up before Paris did. Notre-Dame at six in the morning, an empty square, and the discovery that I was not actually first. The locals were already doing their rounds.