All of the work I've done in the past two weeks seems preliminary, as if it belongs in a sketchbook.  I don't think any of it looks finished.  I began by deciding to spend the next months drawing a window in a spare bedroom.  I took a look at the window and saw it offered a lot:  the shapes of the window itself, the grid formed by mullions that divided the view and offered a way of managing scale, the view itself of mixed foliage and houses and chimney and balcony and the panes which offered the possibilities of reflection.

I began by trying to record what I saw: all the stuff out there.  I used a fat 8B pencil.  I draw a slightly quavery line. I wanted something sharper. I tried drawing just a corner of the window using a straight edge.  I liked that better, but thought that if I wanted to learn how to draw freehand,  I should draw freehand. I tried charcoal. I used some graphite.  I got interested in the patterns of light made by the venetian blinds.  I liked the blackness of the panes at night when only the interior was illuminated.   Looking at Charles Ritchie's work made me think about size.  I went a little smaller.

A persistent cough has had me sleeping in that room  and gave me the opportunity to admire the smudgy patterns of light that appeared in the early morning.  I tried to capture that.  Then I lay in bed and put my glasses on and the smudgy venetian blinds got sharply defined. I tried that.  Then I tried to include some of the interior and some of the exterior.

It hasn't been an unsatisfactory experience.  I see it as a beginning, but nothing I've done so far seem to have a finished quality.