It is said that small things amuse small minds, but I’d like to change the saying to ‘small things engage inquiring minds’. I hope my latest drawing ‘tic’ falls into this latter category. Sitting, waiting in the car is something that most of us experience quite often, so I decided I should take advantage of this situation to indulge in a little drawing. I do want to emphasise that I only draw while the car is parked. I realised that there was often too much happening in all directions to quickly decide what to draw. So I decided I would draw what appeared in my car’s rear vision or wing mirror, or the mirrors themselves.

Rearview mirror and parking meters, ball point pen, 9 September 2014

The more time I have, the more elaborate the drawings can get.

Wing mirror with open garage door, pen and ink and acrylic marker, 16 September 2014

Of course I don’t always have my sketchbook to hand so when needs must, I grab one of the many car park tickets that seem to live in our car. This 5.5 x 8.5 cm (roughly 2 x3 “) format focuses the mind wonderfully!

‘No parking’ rear view mirror, ballpoint pen on car park ticket, 12 October 2014

One thing I noticed when I did this drawing was that if I use blind drawing technique to reproduce the writing I don’t make mistakes when I draw the reversed letters. Quite interesting.