Anew Friend.

I've never been comfortable enough with a book to call it a journal. Even as it grows in notation and decreases in immaculateness, it's still a 'sketchbook' and we don't quite create a journaler's bond. We stay more like co-workers.

But now I have found one. And here are a couple of little things from it, drawn on the Shetland Isles.

Me & the journal made good company up there in the Cold North. I think we're definitely going to stick together from here.

Hooters.

Once upon a time I became noctornal and created an owl overnight. I'd wanted to make an owl out of pencil sharpenings for a while, since seeing a photograph of a particularly smart-looking one in a wildlife magazine. Its overlapping feathers struck me as very similar to the wooden waste of our graphitey friends, so I knew it would make sense to recreate it this way. And here's the result, pre-framing and free as, well a bird.

My boyfriend used a plane to grind down that twig for me, which looked very taxing as I watched on (with bleary eyes and a cup of tea), and he helped me carefully frame the whole caboodle ready for its place within our Crayon 2.0 exhibition at Cafe Boscanova in Boscombe. He can be seen there for the next few months unless someone adopts him.

The owl not the boyfriend. I won't let anyone adopt this helpful fellow.

What I like most about the resulting image is that the whole thing is made from a tree, including the paper.

...Unless you count the blue tac behind all those shavings, shhhhhh. Our secret.