
I resolved to draw more quickly, and drew a picture of the Pilgrim of Brixham: a nineteenth century sailing trawler which has been brought back into sailing condition by a group of volunteers who have come together as a small charity to operate Pilgrim as a working boat, doing sailing holidays and training sessions and so on. They happen to be one of our customers, one of the more interesting ones too! That was a fairly quick thing to draw, not least because I didn't put in any crew.

Next, I had an idea to draw Fingon and his knights, coming over the bridge to visit Rian in Nen Lalaith, inspired by this bit of song by

Possibly I should try it in acrylics: it's muche easier to do fine detail in acrylic, and you don't have the problem that the colour around the edges of small people comes off and muddies the whole thing. On the other hand, I am probably better at faces in pastel, as you can rework pastel a lot whereas acrylic tends to end up looking rubbery if you rework it too much, which is not good for faces.
In the short term, I decided to be less ambitious and just draw Fingon on a horse, on a bridge. This went better, and didn't actually take that long to complete.

All the pencil drawings are on some A4 slices of card that I found in the the skip at the recycling centre. I was supposed to be just taking in some boxes to get rid of them, but when I went up the steps and started heaving in boxes, I noticed that there were all these fabulous creamy rectangles of card, just sitting there in huge bundles.
So I stole a big heap of them, as many as I could carry. They are lovely to draw on and solid enough that you don't need any support for them, you can just hold them on your lap. I don't know what I shall do with them all once I've drawn on them though, there are stacks and they are thick enough that I can't easily just shove them into a folder.