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.

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.

Sometimes I wonder if updating a website is healthy. I mean, here I am, on the interwebs again, dicking around with stuff rather than making more paintings. At the minute, I’ve been doing these paintings of the bookshelves in my house, because it’s cold and miserable outside.

Lots of indoor pursuits! Maybe next year I’ll learn gin rummy and hang out with old people.

Almost immediately, I ran into a problem. The cops tried to blow up my luggage.

A man can’t even take a whizz on a train without the state getting up in his grill. Damn these post-terrorist times. Thankfully, the rest of the train journey was less eventful. In fact, it was so uneventful that I decided to do some watercolours out of the window, after drawing a dog and my waterbottle.

Painting on the train was ace, and I really enjoyed it. Sadly, it was the most productive – in terms of work I made – during my trip. As soon as I got off the train I was involved in the process of picking up my stuff and working out what to do with it.

I thought I would draw all the boxes from storage, but dealing with it was so exhausting – and so distracting – that it was hard to keep it together. Just waking up to the thought of all my boxes of crap was enough to wipe me out on Tuesday, and I spent the morning in bed under a giant fluffy duvet.

On Wednesday I picked myself up and went into town to see some friends. I took an early bus into the city centre so I could do some drawing, and this was pretty much the only time I managed to do so in the city. Lesson learned: if you want to do drawing, you have to make time for it. I particularly wanted to draw the train station, but those builders grabbed the good seats so they could smoke. I ended up surrounded by a bunch of teenagers.

(Oh, and by the way, excuse my fingers – this sketchbook’s uneven spine doesn’t make for good scanning. It does have lovely paper though, which makes it quite useful for on-the-go sketching.)

I managed a few quick watercolours before it was time for my lunch date, and then I barely managed to scribble anything on Thursday. I was exhausted by the prospect of throwing away, or giving away, pretty much a decade’s worth of stuff. Most of that stuff was books that I had built up, thinking they were the backbone of my “adult” possessions, but were just another lump of stuff that ended up needing to be disposed of.

I’m trying to write a short essay about it, but my thoughts are complicated by the reasons why I had to throw all that stuff away. Bad relationships, serious illnesses, and confused education choices made my life a lot more interesting than it normally is. The act of actually getting rid of the stuff was quite nice – a chance to see old friends, catch up, and give them presents. The act of sorting it out in some literary form is really tough, and I worry I’ve traded a talent with words for a talent with images…

My visit was generally fun, and it reinforced my urge to make more drawings, to make better drawings. But it also made me want to communicate better with those drawings, because otherwise, what’s the point?

Blech! I hate this part of the year, which is dark and cold and horrifically soul-rendingly boring. As ever, Christmas encouraged me to move away from all my carefully crafted routines, and eat lots of cake in front of the TV.

Then, just as I’m getting the hang of 2012, I finished my notebook. Rather than pick up another one I’ve been doodling on loose bits of paper, such as these watercolour postcards. Here, I’ve done an ink sketch of some of my Christmas haul, which has ended up piled up on the desk at the end of bed.

Next week I shall be on the road, so updates will probably be even more sparse than usual. But I shall probably be looking at more interesting things, and I’m determined to do some sketching out there, so you’re saved – SAVED! – from me drawing more piles of books. In all fairness though, I am going to retrieve about a hundred books, so maybe it’s more of a temporary reprieve.

The one thing I’ve been doing in 2011 is drawing. I’ve spent the whole year doodling and painting, to the point where I’ve managed to fill up 14 notebooks – and I’m only a few pages away from filling up my fifteenth!

I’ve drawn a picture of where I store my finished notebooks, above my sock draw and next to my paper trays (where boring paperwork like bank statements live).

It’s fun to pull out my old notebooks and look through my drawings that I’ve done since last December. I don’t know if I’ll keep them all forever, but for now they’re a good record of what I did this year.

It’s that special time of year again, where no matter if you’re a follower of Tarvu or you have been touched by his noodly appendage, you suddenly find yourself needing to do a bunch of stuff involving buying cards and going to parties.

This is a time of year where it is just hard to get things done. It’s dark and cold, and the excitement of a new year is just around the corner. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been finding it difficult to apply my butt to the seat and get down to work recently! Whatever the reason for my procrastination, it has meant that this is the first year I’ve been on top of my christmas card list. Huzzah!

The other thing about this time of year is that you have to go out to parties and meet people. You might think that you can stay in and get more work done, but you’ll probably end up eating cake in front of the TV and feeling miserable. I’m probably speaking from personal experience here, but I know I’m not alone in dragging myself out only to have an unexpectedly nice time.

My friend Mike runs a ‘zine called “Opinionated Geordie Monsters”, where each page is a hand-drawn monster reviewing a gig. If you’ve seen a gig and fancy sending in a page, here’s the details.

I sent in the above picture as an opinionated Geordie mathematician. You’ll have to track down down a copy of the ‘zine to find out what he’s saying.

We are, however, bad at tidying up, so things pile up around us, like paperwork and magazines. I quite like drawing the shape of piles of paper, but I’m not as fond of having them around. Piles of books are better, as they can usually support the weight of a mug of coffee. The grey splodges are copies of The Friend magazine, which were two complicated to deal with properly. I did like drawing the RCA connectors though – I used to be really into stereo gear.

Under the chair is another miscellaneous pile that I’m not even going to attempt to describe. It has a copy of the Spectator and a train time-table, but everything else is a dusty mystery of the ages. Don’t touch it; you may anger the natives.

I found this old lino print as I was tiding up a bookshelf in my room. I made it when I was on my foundation course, which is a mad year where you try out a bunch of different stuff, see what works best for you, and have a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it, not only because I really enjoed the work I was doing, but because I was around a bunch of people. Prior to the course I’d been working in a really dull job, so it was great to get back to socialising with people.

Of course, people come in two genders, and I was still at that age when young men are completely unused to being around women. I made a fool of myself a few times, but the worst time – one of those times when you still kick yourself, years later, for what you did – was working in the print room. Possibly even on the print above, but I can’t be sure.

What I do remember was that there was a girl on the course with me whom I managed to say the most crass and sexist thing to. I meant it to be funny and flirty, but it just came out totally wrong, and left me looking like a complete spanner. Doh!

Cut to earlier this year, at the Digswell Trust Open Studios. I was wandering around, taking a look at the studios, when the same girl I insulted turned up. She looked exactly the same, which is how I managed to recognise her. I would have gone up and said hello if our only memorable interaction hadn’t been me, ramming my foot hard into my mouth whilst at the same time manifesting a giant penis on my forehead.

Oh, the print? Yeah, it’s totally different from what I do now. If I had to tie the two things together I’d make some parable about change, but it’s probably best if you do it. These days I don’t spend too much time beating myself up over old stuff, and just try and push out new stuff. Hence, perhaps, this paragraph.