One page left

This post was originally published on my Drawing my way round London blog on 2 December 2011.

Yesterday I spent a few hours invigilating at an art exhibition. Since we only had a couple of visitors all afternoon I had plenty of time to complete a sketch in a book I'm keen to finish. Once I'd finished it I began leafing through it, having not looked at the sketches for a very long time, and this is what I found.

Several pages at the front have been torn out. Then the first image, a view of a park, is dated 26 April 1991! That's more than 20 years ago. I was obviously experimenting with oil pastel then because most of the drawings are in that medium. The next drawing is another view of the same park followed by a pot plant and then fruit in a bowl.

The book remained untouched for a couple of years when I took it up again. There is a run of drawings I made while staying with friends in Farnham in Surrey in summer 1993. These included a child's toy, some flowers in a vase, an unfinished drawing of Malcolm playing a guitar.

Then it's off to a visit to my parents in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk during harvest time. The trees look like palm trees and the scene is so bright that the end result appears like something from the Caribbean. Then there are autumn leaves followed by a pair of scissors and so on and on. This series ends in Brixton on 31 May 1994.

And so the book remained unused until 28 July this year. After being ignored for 17 years I decided to work in water soluble pencils. Not surprisingly the subjects I've concentrated on are much the same as before. The first few are views of our local park, then a view of a shopping street near Waterloo and views of St James' Park at lunchtime.

Yesterday's effort was a pen view of a side room in Union Chapel. I have one page left and am wondering what I'll choose to depict.