Pinterest and a new Project

Pinterest is one of those sites that is browsable, in that you can search, or just wonder, looking at a collection of details, construction materials, techniques and just general ideas and slightly related subjects. I started my site, almost twenty years ago, mostly because of my lecturing, and one to one detailing sessions, uploading details I found that explained the detail I was lecturing on, some my own and many fron others. From there I started to load up a lot more of my own photos, I love travelling, so if you want to see a collection of benches from around the world, or a heap of brickwork details I have found, or seen. try an hour on my site. click on my icon on the top right and look for a folder that matches you interest, or follow this link. So what’s the new venture, well I want to start a new podcast, or teaching site to expand on how a detail comes together. Too many sites concentrate on the drawing skill, the right line, but a decision I made in the rewriting of Mitchells Construction , was to return to that doodle, or sketch you do when trying to understand a detail, new or perhaps an old detail in a 200 year old house, or stately House. It’s these details that matter, to both your training, and understanding, so the more you do, the more you understand, and the more fluent your sketching becomes, the need to use or not use, a scale, what pencil to use, what colour will emphasise the materials. Will I do it here or elsewhere, at present, its elsewhere, simply because I want to do it as a team. I have a group of friends dotted round the globe I want to involve. who like the sound of what I want to do, and part of it is to take Mitchells back to 1953, probably the last great update by W. Hanneford Smith I want to explore not just an idea, but the drawing that’s lived, had time to fail, its owner long gone to defend, the drawing that time now looks after. A photo might be the quick way to do this, but a sketch has depth, understanding, and above all time. And for me. time is so important to sketching, I have watched the quick doodler work, and marveled at to skill of the lines and the figure that emerges, but I wonder, has the artist seen the subject, thought about it, wondered if he or she, should move a degree or so to see a better view, or has a shadow opened up a different perspective, time, and time alone allows this. I carry with me simple tools a few pencils, mostly a soft B a soft rubber, and an A5 spiral bound sketch book, I purchased from a stall when Queen Anne, the cruise ship I was on, called at her first port of call in Spain. the usual food, and soft toys, but one lady was selling artist, materials, not mass produced, but handmade paper that was a little ragged, but felt right, I only had enough Euros to buy one, but loved it, so now it’s in my stachel, along with a the B pencil and rubber, what more do I need, the colour I add later. Don’t get me wrong, here, I still took a photo of Cartagena, port with my Pixel phone, just to gather as much Metadata as possible, time, date, location, weather, so I can go back and remember, something that’s increasingly becoming more difficult as I grow older.