December 2019 | Books & Links
A Handmade Vegan Watercolour Sketchbook
Here are a few photos of my first attempt at bookbinding. I wanted to make a sketchbook with paper that would be suitable for watercolour painting, but I couldn’t find a vegan watercolour sketchbook that I liked. It might sound like a funny thing to worry about being vegan, but quite often watercolour paper is coated – ‘sized’ – with gelatine. Gelatine helps reduce absorbency and allow you to rework wet paint on the surface of the paper, but it’s a by-product of animal husbandry and something vegetarians and vegans avoid. I thought it would just be easier to make my own sketchbook so that I could have full control over the paper, the binding, the covers and the size.
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Silver Linings
In the late summer of 2018 construction work began on two high rise tower blocks north and west of our flat. As seasons passed I watched as planning permission was granted, the old buildings on the two sites were demolished, foundations were filled and the steel skeletons of the two towers climbed ever higher. By the spring equinox I was worried that the tower to the west of us was going to block golden hour.
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Loneliness
On the way to town to buy birthday cards on Sunday afternoon, a man stopped us to ask if we were local and if so, where he could go for some lunch. Reliant on a walking frame he explained that he couldn’t go very far and that he wasn’t familiar with Birmingham, but that he happened to end up here as a result of a mix up with the trains. The question, it turns out, wasn’t really about lunch, but rather an excuse to start up a conversation. Step by painful step we continued in the same direction as him for some twenty minutes, covering just twenty metres in that time, but also more than twenty years of his memories. Love, loss, disability, loneliness, despair and the cost of living, but also his love of classics, philosophy and memories of all the places he has called home over the fifty seasons he’s seen come and go.
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The Darkest of Days
On the darkest day, I went in search of light.
In recent weeks as the northern hemisphere transitions into winter, wrapping Britain in a damp embrace of fog and grey skies, I’ve been struggling to read. Two weekends ago, having contorted myself and my book to fit under the narrow beam of light cast by the little reading lamp on my bedside table, I found myself lying flat on my back on the floor trying to foam roll my spine into oblivion.
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