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May 28 2012
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Art, Biggleswade

The Venice Notebook

For Christmas last year, my Dad gave me an A6 Fabriano notebook – one of the ones with the red “Venice” pattern on the cover. I tried to carry it around as much as possible and do some drawing in it everywhere I went – this didn’t always work out, but I found it had really great paper. Not only was it nice to draw on, but it could also deal with watercolour.

This is one of my last pages in it, with some sketches from Hitchin, and from a walk in the fields near my hometown. Just after I stopped and painted those two boxes, I came across a dead rabbit by the side of the path and screamed like a little girl. After calming down, I carried on walking, and found a birdwatcher just around the corner from me. We studiously ignored each other.

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May 24 2012
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Art

The Spanish Castle that Doesn’t Quite Work

News! I’ve been interviewed over at the Circus of Illustration blog, which features artists from the Bedfordshire area. You can read about my special inspiration hat here.

I also managed to get over to Tulse Hill in London to visit the artist Rosaelie Schewelkier, who runs the Emely Space. We had a nice chat about being an artist in London, which convinced me that a) I am doing the right stuff for me, and b) I don’t have anywhere near the amount of energy it would take to move out and live somewhere that’s not Bedfordshire.

This was proved when I got home and collapsed for a few days. Getting lost on the way to Tulse Hill was exhausting!

I’ve wanted to post this image online for a while, but I kept hoping I’d do a better version of it. This is my third attempt, and I realised that I just don’t have the willpower to give it a fourth attempt right now; I’ve got the paper all set up and ready to go, but instead I’ve been working on trees. This piece was also done on some slightly-larger-than-my-scanner paper, which is why there’s a sort of grey fringing around the edges.

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May 07 2012
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Art, Visit

Liverpudlian Residency

A few weeks ago I was invited over to Liverpool by Gary and Lena, who run The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home. I had a residency with them in 2008, just before I started my Masters course, and I always felt horribly guilty that I’d never sent them anything. After all, it was a paid residency – shouldn’t they get something for their money?

To assuage my guilt, I had sent them a few postcards in the mail in 2010 and ’11. I was quite surprised, however, when they got in touch and asked me to come and do some watercolours of their local area, but I grabbed the chance to get out of Bedfordshire. We agreed that I’d stay in their house whilst they were away over Easter, and I spent about two and a half weeks in the city.

I never completed that Masters course in 2008 because I got really sick. I’m mostly better now, but I live with my folks in Bedfordshire because I’m not entirely better, so going to Liverpool was a chance to measure how recovered I was. The answer? Not as much as I like to think!

At the minute, I’m working on collating the drawings I did in Liverpool into some form of document – more than a blog post, perhaps a ‘zine – that I can distribute, somehow. I’m interested in getting it printed as a real document, so if you have any tips on printing, please let me know.

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Apr 26 2012
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Art

Islamic Geometric Patterns

pattern

Before I went away to Liverpool – which, I swear, will be the subject of my next post, for any friends and relatives who wonder what happened there – I picked up a few books about geometric designs. I haven’t managed to do much with them since my return, but I thought I’d post the above image.

I’m fascinated by these dense patterns, and part of me wants to run off and draw these for ages, but I know that there’s a limit to how engaging I will find them in the long term. If I sat down to draw these every day, how long would it take before I was sick of it? So these patterns are a nice distraction to pick up occasionally, maybe when I’m feeling too tired to think about much. There’s a real joy in following the instructions and making something nice!

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Mar 06 2012
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Art

Pancake Ordering

I drew this guy while he was ordering a pancake with his girlfriend, and then coloured it in when I got home. My skin tones with watercolours are still pretty bad – everyone turns out kind of sallow and pale – and this is one of the first times it actually looks like the guy I was drawing.

Before that, I had been in the Victoria and Albert museum, drawing in the cafe, and before that a quick jaunt through the Natural History museum. Just a quick aside, but I have never been in a museum where the other people where so rude as the Natural History museum, to the point where I had enough of people shoving their cameras, babies, and butts within my personal space as I was trying to sketch. It was not fun.

As opposed to the Natural History Museum, the V&A was loads of fun. They have plenty of stools available for drawing on, but I was kind of tired and had a lot of time to kill, so ended up sitting in the cafe again. The coffee there is excellent if pricey. I’ve no idea what the proper food is like as it’s too pricey for me, which is why I got told off for eating a sandwich in the 15th century sculpture gallery last time.

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Feb 29 2012
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Art, Regular

Reykjavik, 1969

I just finished this A3-sized watercolour yesterday, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I do have a few problems though – for starters, I don’t have anywhere to put it!

I’m thinking about doing a few more of these, of other cities that I haven’t been to. It seems weird to just do one, and then say “oh yeah, that worked really well!”, and then stop. If I do, I might put up a bit more about the process that is involved – it’s quite long, and takes a few days.

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Feb 21 2012
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Art

The Event

The Event was a pair of apocalypse-themed afternoons of lectures, a week apart. I made it to the first one, along but I didn’t make it to the second one, as I had a terrible cold – probably from exposing myself to so much humanity in one place.

This is a bit of a bummer, as the first Event was excellent. It was also totally packed; I arrived  at the basement of the Albany pub early, and found myself a table at the back where I would be able to lay out my watercolours – and then a hundred people packed themselves like sardines into the room. Eek! I spent a lot of time drawing the audience, because they were easiest to see from where I was – behind an extremely tall couple.

I wonder about who the people are at these London events. I always turn up by myself as I’ve given up trying to hook people into coming to these things with me. Folks in Bedfordshire are not interested in the end of the world, and yet there was a strong demand for this sort of thing in London. And there was a strong demand for the other events I’ve been to as well; talks on Isaac Newton’s belief in God, a Zizek lecture, the Fortean Conference… who are these people that like this stuff?

Well, apart from me, that is. I mean, I know who I am.

During the break I had enough elbow-room to do a quick watercolour, but it was over far too quickly. Suddenly everybody filed into the room again and Lewis Dartnell took to the stage. I managed to capture the giant person in front of me, who may or may not be the alliteratively named Wes West (Wes, did you have a similarly tall girlfriend with you? If so, j’accuse!). I actually found it pretty funny to be hemmed in by so many people, but I did get a bit freaked out by the guy standing right behind me. Normally, if somebody stands that close behind you while you’re drawing, they’re a tutor about to offer some criticism of your work (“try and concentrate on the negative space…”).

Feb 18 2012
4 Comments
Art, Comics

The Cumberdumble

The Cumberdumble

I have been in bed for a good portion of the week, laid up with a terrible cold. Therefore, I’ve posted my comic about the apocalyptic consequences of cloning Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch, rather than write smart things.

Seriously, I was totally out-of-action this week. I even forgot the word “pentangle” for about five minutes. How embarrassing.

Edit: There are some spelling errers and mistake grammar in the piece above. This is actually a good thing; it shows how doing multiple revisions of the work helps you catch those annoying glitches!

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Feb 07 2012
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Art, Comics

Hourly Comics Day

Some guy on the internet decreed that February the first is Hourly Comics Day, and recent history has seen people go along with that. It’s not as popular as international Talk Like A Pirate Day, but it actually involves a bit of effort. This year, I decided to give it a go.

My early morning ritual is, shamefully, waking up and reading the internet on my phone, whilst still snuggled in my duvet.

They looked grey in the shop.

AN Magazine is a trade publication for artists. It’s written in a sort of ultra-academic art language, which I don’t like. Or, I should say, it’s liminal properties disturb my conceptions of appropriate language.

And that was my day! Well, most of it. I also did some drawing in front of the TV watching the Andy Kaufman biopic, “Man on the Moon”, which I enjoyed.

What I learnt from doing this was that I need to get way better at hands, and that giving over my creativity to an externally set goal was quite useful. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to think about my day, and make it something that worked in a comic, and I wasn’t afraid to fail at this task. That’s why this post is scrappy and imperfect; I’m not good at making comics, and I’m not perfect at drawing people, but these sorts of externalised creative deadlines let you get over your limitations.

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Jan 26 2012
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Art

Piano Player, Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum once ran a series of adverts, proclaiming that it was an “ace caff (sic) with quite a nice museum attached“. Since then, it’s become a world-class museum with a really motherfucking swanky café attached.

My plan was that I would hang out during the day, doing some figure studies in the V&A’s sculpture gallery, and then head over to the Science Museum’s “Lates” night in the early evening to catch a lecture. After doing a few pages of chalk studies in my slightly-too-large to scan notebook (doh!) I felt the first pangs of hunger set in. This was bad news, as the V&A café is not only super-expensive and super-swanky, but also not a huge amount of fun to sit in – it’s loud, dim, and a little on the cold side.

However, I managed to get a sandwich and a coffee for under a tenner, and then realised that it was the only place in the museum that I could do a watercolour painting – drawing rules say that only dry media is to be used in the galleries. So in between throwing the sandwich into my mouth, I did a short watercolour of the cafés’ pianist.

Afterwards, I went back to doing some chalk studies. My Edinburgh-based friend Cassandra Harrison had sent the chalk to me, and I urge you to check out her blog to read about her ongoing position as a working artist. I was using them to get a handle on the figure, copying the marble sculpture, and had a really great time – I’ll probably go back next week, with a packed lunch.

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