The sky is wintery tonight. Wisps of cloud puff purple shades over the iced orange of the evening sky, and clouds stretch and overlap, then dissipate to imaginary horizons. A crescent moon hovers over these flash-gordon landscapes; up where the purple turns to violet, turns to grey. 

I like the colder snap. It matches the gloom, and makes each breath that much sharper - somehow giving more taste to the evening - or at least a tingle to the mouth. The darkness draws in - like charcoal over turquoise.

I have been full of doubt today - wondering what I have left to give - wondering if my best ideas have been left in the gutters and cul-de-sacs of my past. I think up grand ideas for light sculptures or installations and pull them down in exasperation with myself - scoffing at my attempts before I have made them.

I intended to re-focus this blog around my sketches and work, and now I look in frustration as I once again use the weather to focus my feelings and thoughts - I feel myself becoming a cliché (even if I am self-aware). I find myself thinking in the scratch of pen on paper, quick strokes - light at first, dancing over shape and relative size, then stronger - darker strokes as I dig out perspective and settle on line.

I have not been able to draw today - so I look back through my doodles and rough sketches. I settle for a sketch of Thai Tea  unfurling as it steeps. A memento of a lovely meal. It is not my favourite beverage, though I am reliably informed of the various health giving properties it contains, but it reveals more than it seems, and I like the way the markings of the pen play with light and line.

It is not perfect, indeed the final composition owes itself to mistakes I made when idly marking the limits of the glass. But as with much of my work, and my life, the mistakes set the terms of the finish, and so it is not the mistake, but what I do with it that is important.