I've been wondering if there is such a thing as the perfect sketchbook. I have been searching for an affordable sketchbook with 100% cotton hot pressed watercolour paper. I finally came across a Rhodia Touch sketchbook and ordered one. The paper is lovely and made by Schut mill in the Netherlands. I then became curious and wondered if it was possible to get their watercolour paper anywhere else. I then realised that certain Clairefontaine watercolour papers are made by Schut mill so I may well get myself some. I wish I was the type of person who found something that they liked and only used that. If I could be like that I would probably use Moleskin Art sketchbooks as I really like the paper. It's heavyweight and very smooth. The problem is I just can't stop myself from trying something different. I may be searching for the perfect sketchbook and have already found it. From now on I am going to post once a month on the last Friday of every month.

  ‘This sea of sleep, deep in the foundations of human nature, has its high tide at night: every slumber indicates only that it washes a shore from which it retreats in waking hours. What remains are the dreams; however marvellously they are formed, they are no more than the lifeless remains from the womb of the depths. The living remains in him and secure in him: the ship of waking life, and the fish as the silent booty in the nets of artists.’ Walter Benjamin, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem.” In Walter Benjamin Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926, edited by M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 399. Sometimes I have premonitions, dreams that alert me that something is about to happen. Often, I would prefer not to know. The rest of the time I try to divine the future through tarot cards or runes. This is a pointless exercise. I am on a journey, like everyone else, on our ships of life. Most of us are far from our desti...

I have been reading Looking Inward: How to Find Calm in a Chaotic World by Swami Purnachaitanya and it is one of the best books on meditation that I have read. It is written in a very   straightforward way. I came across it in a charity shop for £1. One paragraph in particular made a lot of sense to me. I often wish that I could just make a living from art and not have to work. This is probably how anyone creative feels, but Purnachaitanya writes that,  '...if you keep on changing or rejecting job opportunities because you are waiting for that perfect dream job, you are not being realistic, and honestly, not very practical. After all, the purpose of a job is to earn money to support yourself and those dependent on you financially. If that's the case, you need to make this your main criteria and not whether it is all that you dreamed of doing with your life. If the main purpose of a job is that you enjoy it all the time, then it is not a job but a hobby. This does not mean that...

  I haven't done any art this week as I am working on making my garden beautiful again. The likelihood is that I will simply turn it into more of a jungle than it already is. I need to start working on my copy book again as it has been a while since I have drawn in it. I knew it would be difficult maintaining the momentum to keep drawing in it regularly. I'm not sure that it has helped my artistic practice although I have transferred some of the images into drawings. I intend to do some larger drawings and may well use images from the copy book when I start those.

  In my post on translation, I wrote how I go through phases of obsessively doing an activity until I tire of it. I said that I was going to stick to drawing. I have since started on watercolours and am now back to gardening. I went to a garden centre and saw lots of beautiful plants but realised that plants have become quite expensive. I remembered that I used to order from Chiltern Seeds so decided to look on their web site. Big mistake – I now have twelve packets of seed on the way, and I don’t know if I have room to grow them or even plant them. In many ways gardening helps art, it gives me inspiration and there is something very grounding about digging in dirt. My art is always about the natural world, albeit dead plants, root, twigs and bones. I would call it vanitas art – art about the transience of things. I have always suffered from a form of existential angst. I find existence strange. Sometimes I feel as though it could all dissolve at any moment. This angst is proba...

  I have done a few more tree metallic watercolours and again they do not translate well into photographs. I am going to have to play around a bit with lighting and see if I can get photographs to work better. I have decided that I would like to do some larger metallic watercolours. I am going to order some black Stonehenge HP watercolour sheets and see how that works. I have been in the garden and found some interesting roots I would like to draw. I may even try to do some root metallic watercolours. I have been drawing roots in an A3 Moleskin sketchbook which I really like to draw in. Below are some of the drawings and the roots that I want to work from.