Before leaving Türkiye, we made a trip to Anatolia in the van, and I drew daily:

Then, on our last day in Istanbul, I drew these:

Compositionally, I feel that these are a lot stronger than anything I had done up to this point. I think I’d be happy with these as the backgrounds of a scene in my book.

Then, we left. We were moving to Italy in August, but I had to return to London to do Visa tasks. So, I drove the campervan from Istanbul to London in 10 days. Journey detailed below:

Serbia was 39 degrees Celsius while I was there:

In London, I visited my favourite museums:

And, going to the part of the Tate Britain that my father loved the most, I made a study of how Turner composed his paintings:

I did a new self-portrait, this time a lot better:

I drew spooky scenes:

I tried to design a future tattoo for myself (root vegetables, in memoriam for my step-father):

The rest of the summer was visiting friends in the UK, and packing up all the stuff we’d left at my mum’s house, in order to move to Italy. I kept on drawing, and going to life-drawing classes:

In late August, I began my new job (teaching). Working full-time means that I don’t have much time for personal projects. So, at the moment I’m figuring out how I can draw the book, bit by bit. It seems like a huge, scary, un-finishable task. I’ll get there, slowly.

I spent about two months doing no art at all (except for my daily drawing journal). Then, this past weekend, I returned to art, by doing Fancy Bookmarks, in watercolour and ink:

This brings us to the present. I feel okay about art: not great. I think that I’m okay at backgrounds, sometimes passable at drawing people, often incapable of making a whole coherent scene. I’m getting there.

I haven’t written anything about the actual writing of the book, which is a whole post in itself.

Thanks for sticking with my story.