A bit blah today. H rang last night, before shower, before tea, and asked if I'd come in to assist with a caesarian (labrador, 7 live puppies, one dead from too long in the birth canal). Didn't get home until 10:30 but couldn't go to sleep until 11:30 as too wound up. No matter what time one's head hits the pillow the birds will sing at dawn which is at ten minutes to 5. They're actually singing before sunrise as I was awake at 4 listening to the kookaburras, always first out of bed in the morning, to be quickly followed by the dawn chorus which included ill-tempered honks from Algernon as he was up and where was his breakfast?

R is full of energy. Even though it's Sunday and he went to bed at the same time as I (although he was sound asleep on the couch when I got home) he's slashed the creek paddock which is full of shepherd's purse, nettles and cobblers pegs. I, on the other hand, have been looking at peoples sketches on the sketching forum, http://www.sketching.cc/index.html. Some talented artists to inspire. Hard-working too, sketching on subways, in the park or often, their own feet for want of a more convenient model. Out of all of them I've only bookmarked one artist. Yes, I admire the talent, the beauty and the detail of the artists but I'm looking for some intangible thing which involves technical expertise applied to the creative stream - not copying what is seen but what is created in the mind.

The last drawing, birds and a castle floating downstream is framed and hanging. This description does not sound very promising but I like it, perhaps because the birds, in ink contrasting with the lighter graphite, lend this a slightly menacing quality to what otherwise would've been just an attempt at drawing a building, something I have never done.

Then faced with another empty white sheet of paper I stalled. Not for long however. I was thumbing through The Noble Cat book and saw these photos of illuminations from a 12th century copy of a bestiary. The cats, stylized lions are 'framed' within the picture and stand against backgrounds of pattern; criss cross, a star spangled night sky, that sort of thing. The big cats are not lifelike and are crudely drawn, when compared to the realism today's artists are capable of, yet they have a charm and a punch that appeals to me. So. Rather than a big cat I've drawn the outline of an everyday house cat in mid leap. There is no detail, just a heavy outline and some light shading. I've only just begun it but the cat is framed within two drawn frames and will have a third *real* frame when finished.