This is other ‘live’ drawing, done with a fountain pen and paint brush. Another wet moody day……. the weather not me…….

Fountain Pen ink is the most amazing stuff when you work into wet water colour paper…..it has a life of it’s own. Do you remember those ‘magic painting’ books, where you added water and colour would appear….well they have the same kind of quality, the ink pigments separates, and spreads like light and time. It creates a magical energy, that mixes with history. This is the medium I feel part of.

As for the the castle, it clings to rim of a steep valley, looking over the stream that creeps down the tidal floor and bends round the dark three cliffs creating torturous currents.

Sat with the crumbling remains at your back, you watch figures make their way over stepping stones, a black dog splashing ahead, and wonder about their lives. And the lives of the people who lived here, when the walls stood………..There are stories…of the day the castle was finally abandoned, swamped by an eerie black suffocating cloud that killed as they ran. A mystery never solved.

Today the battles are gone, time is reclaiming it……as it is these moment that I sit and feel like I could fly out over the three cliffs, into the ocean light……. life goes on, and it is down to each of us to make what we will of life. People around can support, help, advise, laugh with you…..but in the end the responsibility to define and create what we want from our individual lives is our own. Finding courage to stand and face what frightens us, to make changes, to hold what we love, to be who we want to be, that comes from within. It is a journey that teaches you when you fall, get to your own feet, walk on. Life is for grasping in the fleeting time we have……and the more time draws lines on your face, the more you wish you had begun when life was young.