I found myself in this drawing room again today, the kind of space where time moves differently. The light was doing that thing it does in late afternoon—pooling in corners, turning the walls the color of old honey. There's a fireplace that hasn't seen a fire in years, but someone's arranged prints around it anyway, dozens of them in mismatched frames. An easel leans against the wall with a half-finished landscape, patient and unpretentious.
I settled at the wooden table with a glass of something pale and my sketchbook. The pencils were already there, worn down from use, and I started drawing without really thinking about it. Just the shapes of the room, the angles where light breaks against shadow. There's something about this particular quality of light—it's not dramatic or performative. It's the kind that makes you want to work slowly, to notice how a line can suggest depth, how a single mark can hold the whole feeling of a space.
The room was quiet except for the sound of pencil on paper and someone's soft conversation near the window. I wasn't trying to make anything precious. Just working through what I was seeing, letting my hand respond to the geometry of the place. The drawing didn't need to be perfect; it needed to be honest. That's what these old rooms teach you, I think. They've stood long enough to know the difference.
By the time I looked up, the light had shifted again. The golden moment was fading into something cooler, more violet. I closed the sketchbook and sat with the glass for a while longer, watching how the room transformed itself in the dusk.
