I have decided to present this on-going one-sketch-per-day project as a monthly video slideshow rather than as a picture-by-picture blog post as it's simply quicker this way. Can I encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel? There're over 70 of my videos there already and I plan to add to these.

According to this article , in 2019 just 26% of under-18s spent some time each day reading, and only  53% said they read books purely for pleasure. This is the lowest level recorded by the National Literacy Trust since 2005. Elsewhere in The Guardian , it was reported that, "According to a 2018 Author’s Guild Study the median income of all published authors for all writing related activity was $6,080 in 2017, down from $10,500 in 2009; while the median income for all published authors based solely on book-related activities went from $3,900 to $3,100, down 21%. Roughly 25% of authors earned $0 in income in 2017." As I've written previously , all writers have experienced a steady decline in book sales. There is so much free reading available online, including free books by the thousands just waiting to be downloaded. Consequently most writers, including traditionally published writers with established reputations and fan-bases, hold down conventional jobs as well. I

I hope you enjoy this video slideshow of my life drawings from 2019. The video features adult nudity throughout, so if you're likely to be offended by that simply close the video down and move along to my next post. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Our Jack Russell Terrier, Poppi, snoozing (as usual). At the start of 2020 I began a fun little project which involves creating one sketch per day. A sketch is not the same as a drawing. Sketches tend to be done quickly and are intended as practice or experimental pieces, whereas drawings are more carefully composed and refined, being intended as finished works of art. People often use the two terms interchangeably, seeing how a sketch is drawn and drawing can be sketched out during its preliminary stage. Anyway, here are my favourites from January. One of the plants growing in my studio. A neighbour's Westie, keeping guard in their window. Self Portrait Bananas in a hand-turned wooden bowl. Watercolour sketch of a tree in Birkenhead Park. Best buddies: Emily and Poppi Graphite and watercolour. Sketch of my left hand. Poppi. Richard, with two couch companions. Emily. Beyond the kitchen sink. Well, I hope you enjoyed

Life drawing, 2019. Arriving late at the Oxton life drawing group, the only seat left to me was squashed into a corner. This  offered a severe sideways-on view of the model, Eve. Initially I assumed this would result in a poor pose, but then I realised I could actually turn it to some advantage by using negative space - and so composed the model to fill the lower triangular half of the paper. The end result is perhaps a bit unconventional, but I'm quite pleased with it. What do you think of the drawing? This next life drawing presented a few challenges also. This time I was sitting directly opposite the model, Rob, which meant I had to do a fair amount of fore-shortening on both legs. The hands could be improved, but I'm satisfied with that thigh-knee-foot and raised arm-shoulder. I have maintained a site on Hubpages for some years now, and there you will find a whole series of non-fiction articles written by me. The subjects range from How to Make a Frog Pond , to

Charlotte, 18 Sept 1991 Continuing this excursion down Memory Lane to my art school days oodles of years ago, I'll now share the second batch of my work which captured my fellow students. The charcoal study on rough grey paper is of Charlotte, whose surname I can't remember. I do recall her fondness for boldly-coloured stripy tights, though, which she usually wore with Doc Martin boots. This economical grey sugar paper was routinely used during drawing classes. If I recall rightly, we students were charged only 2p per A2-size sheet, which was a large part of its attraction. (This was some 30 years ago, remember!) James Loftus, 25 Jan 1990 This was a group drawing project set by one of the college tutors, Ian Cameron, who asked us to draw the lamp and imply weight and shadow by use of line only. So I'd drawn this boring lamp, which floated in the middle of a sheet of white paper. What else could I do with the lamp drawing, other than twiddle my thumbs for the rem

Heather Gum, 13th Sept 1991 In this blog post I'll be sharing sketches and drawings dating from around 30 years ago when I was an art student at City College, Clarence Street in Liverpool. The old building we used then has been demolished and replaced with something new. Did it need replacing? Well, probably. Or maybe an extensive renovation would have been adequate to make the premises meet modern health and safety regulations. It's a shame that the lovely old stone staircase with its ornate cast iron railings was consigned to history, though. The lofty painting studios on the top floor, where we Fine Art students were installed, had a distinct character of its own, too, its wooden floors being patterned by layered splatters of paint accrued over the long decades of its use. A strong aroma of turps and linseed oil, coffee, incense and, occasionally, wet coats, filled the air - which was usually fractured by Dave McKay's death/industrial metal tracks. City of Li