A couple of mid-winter sketches, trying to capture the dancing shapes of a log fire. I drew ‘blind’, watching the flames to catch their individual fluid shapes, feeling out the lines with a pencil, and occasionally looking down at the page to get their location about right. They reminded me most of very fine cloth being blown in a breeze, barely there. I added  dilute ink and very dilute white gouache later. We’ve always enjoyed staring into fires, entranced by the evanescent but unchanging patterns, like watching waves on a seashore, clouds in the sky, but cosier.

Pencil, Lexington grey in water-brush, white gouache, 20 minutes each – A5