sunday scrapbooking

I spent a very quiet afternoon at home yesterday, listening to the rain fall outside whilst I sorted through masses of old disposable camera photographs and my big box of magazine cuttings, flyers, posters, postcards and old drawings. (I came across quite a lot of odd stuff I'd forgotten about in the box too - a shiny conker my mother gave me once, a packet of tarot cards(!?) and a painted wooden toy horse, for example.) My plan is to create a master scrapbook, full of these photos and other interesting bits and pieces, which I'll keep on adding to over time. I've started various books like this in the past; I really need to make sure I keep this one going.

Oh, how I love this painting. The postcard was given to me last year; it's from Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, where the painting hangs. Boy with Cat is a portrait of Jean Bourgoint by the English artist Christopher Wood (1901-1930). The two met while Wood was studying art at the Académie Julian in Paris. At the time of the painting, Bourgoint was 21 and Wood was 25, addicted to opium and suffering from paranoia. He was under the drug’s influence when he died four years later, under a train in Salisbury; his tombstone was designed by Eric Gill.

But back to my point: inspiration courtesy of Cecil Beaton and his famous scrapbooks.

So fun. I love the way everything has been cut out with hardly any straight lines. I despise straight lines and I'm not particularly good at being neat either.

Later on I did a quick drawing of a loud pink sitting room, although the harsh pastels didn't quite work with the texture of the paper. Alas, perhaps it'll end up in the new scrapbook...