Art « Pete Hindle

February 7, 2012

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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January 26, 2012

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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January 17, 2012

A Week in Newcastle

I spent all last week in Newcastle, because I’ve been paying to store loads of stuff up there, and the payments on my rental unit keep making me go into my overdraft. I figured I’d go up there, throw out a bunch of stuff, and see a few friends while I was there. I also wanted to keep drawing, so I took a few sketchbooks with me.

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?

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December 17, 2011

Happy Squidmas!

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.

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December 6, 2011

Opinionated Geordie Mathematicians

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.

December 2, 2011

Lots of Piles

Sometimes, I jokingly refer to my parents house as the “Hindle Family Book Repository”. They have a lot of books. I have a lot of books too, and I’m similarly bad at storing them, but I’ve had to move a lot more. Above is the pile of books on the coffee table, which has a Joan Aiken book of stories, Craig Thompson’s travel-comic Carnet de Voyage, and a romance book. All these books are in the process of being read, or have been read recently. We’re good at reading.

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.

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November 30, 2011

Eleven Years Ago…

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.

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November 25, 2011

Old Door Redux

There’s this old door in Cambridge which I put up on here already, way back in May, but I had to go back to that area. The door is opposite a nice cafe, called Trockel, Ulmann & Freunde, which seems to be one of the few cafes in the centre of Cambridge which isn’t a chain cafe or horrible, so I plonked myself down and took another shot at the door.

It’s ok, right? I mean, one of the people who worked at the cafe said it was good, and I’m fairly happy with it. But what it does show is how I’m gradually improving. It’s important to remember both that you can get better if you try, and that you are going to get better.

In truth, I’ve found the onset of winter a tough time to be doing watercolour, as it’s a bit nippy outside. What should I draw over the winter?! I think I’m going to have to think up a project to keep me occupied over the winter months, possibly using all this ink I have been stockpiling…

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November 4, 2011

Hitchin: Comparatively Bitchin’

I took myself over to Hitchin yesterday, despite feeling somewhat like poop, as my favourite art supply shop in the area had moved. For ages, Tim’s Art Supplies had been in a hidden-away corner of the town, occupying a small shop full of arts materials. Half of the challenge of shopping there was learning the layout of the shop! Then, last week, they suddenly sent me an email saying they’d moved and were now in a different street.

Despite my best intentions I only got there as the light was fading in the afternoon, and I had to rest for a bit doing drawings of Hitchin’s marvellously oddball architecture whilst supporting the local coffee shops.

I’ve scanned the above drawing into my computer using a slightly different method. I’m not sure if it looks OK though? Maybe. Well, good enough; there’s always a learning process with new technology, and I’m damned if I’m going to spend my entire time ballsing around with a scanner when I could be painting.

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November 2, 2011

No-kay, Cupid

So, I joined an online dating site.

And then I fucking hated it.

I messed around on the site for about three hours, filling in an endless questionnaire (which was kind of fun) and generated the above graph. It reminded me of the time that I went for a job interview at a Subway Sandwich shop, and they tried to see if I would be a good employee by asking me multiple choice questions. Just like after that interview, by the time I finished clicking an appropriate number of questions my brain went all squishy and useless.

Then I went and drew in my notebook for twenty minutes, and I felt loads better. I cannot stress how much better this simple activity made me as opposed to my digital socialising. Crazy, right? Who knew the introverted, artistic, unadventurous person would actually enjoy doing something that didn’t involve repeatedly clicking a mouse.

In my day-to-day life, it’s very unusual for me to even see a woman under 50, let alone talk to one, so it was nice to see that the wider world still contains people my own age. But the sort of online site that involves putting up a picture of you (Facebook, Google+, and dating sites) seems to totally do my head in, and part of my continued recovery is learning to avoid what does that. Still, I did get a nifty graph out of it.

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Tag: Art