This morning there is a small drawing, about four inches square and a piece of work that surprisingly despite it's complexity, took only a bout five hours to produce. It is experimental and an ink of deep woodland by the side of a path at Hatchlands which Liz and myself passed just a few days ago. The drawing is not fictitious, as just said, it is a real place and was drawn to demonstrate ways of using a pen in a light manner, for example the ferns in the foreground, were drawn by hardly allowing the pen to mark the paper, whilst the trees and scrubs in the middle and background are treated much differently. the pen was still held very lightly, but moved over the same areas many times until required the depth of tone was reached

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At the moment the weather, in particularly the temperature is very changeable and we never quiet know how many layers to put on. However it is getting warmer and it has been warm enough to sit and sketch a coupe of times this last week; so that is good. We also had good news on the vaccination front, as the vaccinations are realy showing up to be doing their jobs very well indeed. This was shown by independent, non governmental research, as although Johnson is doing a fine job with the vaccinations, his track record of honesty and integrity is somewhat lacking. I do notice that recently there is much governmental talk of the damage done to our economy by the pandemic, at the same time little or no talk is made of damage too the European financial businesses and the trade lost due to the leaving of the European Union.

Having got that of my chest again, shortly Liz will have finished her meeting (zoom), then we are off out for our exerciser along the canal down by Triggs Lock; so I must stop writing now and go to make our picnic.

Duncan