A week in Cornwall
At the end of May ‘24, Sal and I headed off with Dolly dog on the train from Westgate-on-Sea destination Penryn, nr Falmouth for a week away staying with old friends from when we lived in Falmouth 2015-2018.
Before heading down I had made the decision to have as much a screen free time as possible. What I did allow myself to do though was take photographs on my phone but rather than leaving them on my phone, I uploaded them to an online file at the end of each day. In total there were almost 230 photos of which I selected just over 30. I used this selection to draw from as reference and create a condensed summary of our time away.
Almost a month after getting back, I finally finished the last drawing this morning and then set about putting them into spreads. This was always the intention, I didn’t want them to just exist as single drawings, nor did I necessarily want it to be a chronological history of our time away.
A four panel spread of our train ride down with the highlight always being the stretch along the coast at Dawlish.
We made use of our friends lovely garden and Dolly was a big fan of exploring outside.
Mel and Mark kindly gave up their bedroom for us and it was perfect with a nice lounge area and view of the garden when we just needed some chill time.
Dolly regularly parked herself on the windowsill and this pairing therefore made sense.
Was nice to spend time just wandering round Penryn with Dolly dog on the daily walks.
These beautiful gates / doors open up to Bohls Yard with the brilliant Pizza 42 and some cool indy stores.
Another two street scenes from Penryn. The Artists Retreat cottage really resonated as this really felt like a reset break.
Since we were last there, Mark and Mel have reconfigured their lounge into the coolest, most welcoming space. Book, magazines, vinyl and CD’s all have their space surrounding the tele. Dream media wall set up.
Going back through the photographs to find what I wanted to draw was where this started but the joy in finding pairings from the drawings afterwards is pure joy.
This panel is made up of collaging the two drawings on the right and pairing with the amazing tree from The Polurrian Hotel. Wind is what drew these pair together for me.
We didn’t go far as time was limited but this pairing combines a trip to St Mawes with our base in Penryn with alleyways as the connection.
The connection here is St Mawes, a 20 minute boat trip from either of the Falmouth Piers. I absolutely love this place and on this trip I was struck by this tree that stood high above and the beautiful building hugging the rockface that I want to buy when I’m rich :-)
Another beautiful pairing. Diz is the reason I got into Billie Eilish so it’s only right they sit together. We’ll ignore the fact that Diz is sat at Truro station as we missed our connecting train and had to wait an hour for the next one. Oh how we laughed
This took time, I had found it hard at times to keep going but I am so so pleased I did. I’ll come back to this in a future post but I think this is the start of a new way of working for me.