The past few weeks

As time's been short lately for my creative work, I began this piece in a different way to usual. I thought I'd try giving a quick blast of texture then working into it, partly because the sight of a white expanse of untouched paper was a bit dispiriting. Partly because I just fancied trying something new(ish).

So I began with my photo, in this case a collage of a couple of photographs I printed out using my Inkjet printer, then taped together. I made a few sketches of this photograph collage, and added in something I took from another of my photographs to give me my composition.


I was mainly interested in the texture and the shadow play in this photograph. The shadows of the leaves staining the gnarly bark of the tree was what attracted me when I took the photograph, so the play of projected leaves and light on the bark was going to be the focus of this piece.

When I'd worked out my composition I made my initial drawing on paper which I'd stretched and given an undercoat of gesso and white gouache.


Then I quickly painted in the areas I planned to leave white, or the highlights to contrast with the shadows. I did this by painting these areas with masking fluid.


Then I splattered my drawing with a mixture of black acrylic and yellow ochre watercolour. I like the stubbly rough texture of the gesso and the black acrylic, which gave the scary white paper some quick textural animation.

I helped the drying process of the paint with a hairdryer, then when it was dry I used my hands and an eraser to rub off the yellow rubbery masking fluid...


...leaving clean white paper.


Then I began working from my 2 photographs (foreground and background basically) in pen and ink.

And this is as far as I've got so far.

To err is human...but it's a blumin' nuisance!

It's been a lovely spring day today, if a little rushed for me as tonight is the opening of the West Midlands Open 2010. It's hard for me to concentrate on my work for this, and other reasons, but still I make progress on my new drawing.


The sunshine just won't leave the boxroom alone though, prying into my drawing, distorting it, blurring it, making me squint so I can hardly see what I'm doing at all.


I made a pretty major error with my drawing. I don't know how detrimental this will be to the completed piece. It's more problematic with this one because I'm working on watercolour paper without any 'ground' work laid in with gouache and gesso, so it's blatently obvious that I made a mistake as the drawing will forever be scarred by a raised cicatrix of gouache. Pen and ink might have a 'safe' sound to it, but it's actually quite a dangerous medium to work in, totally unforgiving in fact to the erring draughtsman. Your attention only has to lapse a little and you have ruined your drawing irrevocably.



I've grown adept of disguising my blobs and errors over the years, thought not so imaginatively as David Cox, who transformed the blotches and marks on the wrapping paper he used for his beautiful watercolours into birds, wheeling through the blustery often rain drenched sky.



Last night's Mad Men was as superlative as ever, if a little more cluttered and snappier paced than usual. And this morning I've enjoyed travelling through time via rail at this nifty BBC web gallery. I love old railway posters, beautiful shapes, bright and breezy colours, liberating and optimistic. Was there ever a time when they didn't drip nostalgia? Even when they were brand new? I love them in the same way that I love the old Shell posters, many of which were designed by well known artists and illustrators of the day including Graham Sutherland and Edward Ardizzone. Travel is food for the mind, the body and the soul. That's what I've always found, anyway.

TO SALE AND BACK VIA HOBBYCRAFT WORLD

It was back up the motorway again today to collect my unselected work from the Waterside Arts Centre. While I was there I took time to visit the last day of an exhibition of paintings by Walter Kershaw, one of the selectors on the panel of the Waterside Open.

I really enjoyed this exhibition, which was my first visit to the spacious and well lit Lauriston Gallery. Walter Kershaw created the largest industrial mural in Europe for Trafford, and there are studies and photographs recording this on display here, as well as many large and small scale landscapes plus several paintings from his extensive travels. I was intrigued by one painting of a group of young women signed by a female name which appeared to be an anagram of Walter Kershaw. I could have asked the artist himself, as he stood nearby chatting with a small group of people. This added to the pleasant, laid back atmosphere in the gallery, which was very busy with interested folk of all ages.

My particular favourites were a tall painting of high rise apartments which was full of colour and skewed perspective, and a painting on hardboard of cooling towers, which had some really interesting shapes, almost abstract whilst being firmly rooted in the figurative. There were also some lovely snowscapes, which reminded me of how gorgeous everything looked this time last week when G and I drove up through the winter wonderland to deliver my drawings.
Nearly all of the snow was gone today. Just a few greying lumps lingered here and there, the remains of melted snowmen I assumed.

The canal outside the Waterside Art Centre was still frozen, but this time rather than being pristine and pure, the ice had just the opposite effect emphasising the grimmier aspects of everyday living; cigarette butts and drinks cans sat on the greyish crust, along with an array of yellow golf balls!



Last night I made another drawing of my Christmas Poinsettia. I'm quite pleased with this one, which inspired me to buy some more pens from Hobbycraft at Bridgmere, where G kindly took me on the way home. I'm suddenly filled with inspiration and new ideas for the spring. Won't jinx it though by typing it out loud as I seem to have done with so many ideas before, or like golf balls on the ice they might just sink slowly into oblivion!

LINES

I'm putting my drawing aside for now. I think it's finished, though this decision is often the most difficult one to make. Starting a new piece is often fretful, I'm addled by choice and fearful that I've made the wrong decision, from then on, if the decision was right, there are ups and downs, sometimes a horrible feeling of panic grips my throat and either makes it difficult for me to keep still (I'm up and down like a Yoyo, fetching a can of pop from the fridge, feasting on my fingernails), or else I freeze and can only sit looking at what I've done. A radio feature becomes so fascinating that I have to turn it up and give it my whole attention, though of course, my eyes are drawn back to the sticky surface of my drawing.


All that's over for this piece, I think. I've decided to leave the white areas of the foreground tree and the two trees at the extreme left and right of the composition white, for a breathing space, compositional silence.

Someone once told me when I was a student that it can be wise to juxtapose a detailed or highly defined area of work with an area that is more loosely worked. In those days my work tended to be abstract or abstracted, but I'm begining to realise how valuable this piece of advice was and how I should bear it in mind when bringing a piece of figurative work to a conclusion.

I'm going to indulge myself now in a Quorn sandwich (garnished with pickled cabbage with a side order of mixed pickles - a feast as welded to Christmas for me as Santa Claus and Handel).

Lines...

...and a blot on the landscape...


Finally, I wish whoever reads my final blog posting for 2009 a very HAPPY NEW YEAR.

GOLDEN LIGHT ON ARTIFICIAL WOOD

I'd really love a dedicated space where I can do my artwork. Instead I'm chasing the light, or crippling myself sitting crouched over on the bed to draw. As summer draws to a close there's going to be less opportunity to take my drawing outside or to sit in the verandah to get the light (our verandah's freezing in winter, there's no heating and the wind finds every gap and whistles through it, sometimes our verandah sings and rattles like a living thing comforting itself). The past year has seen my eyesight deteriorate, I'm well aware of it, it's one of the things that's driving me to make the most of my talents while I'm still able. There might well come a day when I can't make these detailed journeys and recreations on paper, and I've wasted enough time as it is.

Finding enough light to work comfortably by this evening was difficult. A dismal day shrank away to a gloomy, drizzle bothered evening. I turned my back on my bedroom window and worked for a while under artificial light, in front of my PC (I was listening on-line to the wonderful BBC listen again site while I worked). During a break I noticed how the light flung the shadow of the plastic basket I keep my ink and pens in at the foot of my drawing, almost like a shimmering extension of the drawing itself. I thought this made an interesting counterpoint to the drawing itself.

There are things about this picture I like, and things I'm disatisfied with. I'm worried that without the contrast of black on white the ink loses impact, also that the image loses definition in places, and that it might be difficult to see what's going on, that there's water in the background for instance. On the positive side, I like the contrast of shiny and matt achieved by overpainting the acrylic paint with gesso (I don't know how this will age mind, it's probably a reckless pairing, like thin on fat), I also like the sparkle of gold on gesso, and I enjoy the sensation of working on smooth then rough surface with the dip pen, reminding me even more of how much each new drawing I make (even a drawing from one of my own photographs) is a journey. A journey, in this case literally, over rough and smooth terrain.

I'm also pleased (and provoked) by the contrast and interplay between the abstract/formless blobs of ink, paint and gesso, and the defining lines made by the pen. I'm interested in ways of experimenting with making my pen drawings more 'painterly' and of course, of introducing colour and further layers of texture. I think in this drawing, if nothing else, I'm at least groping towards new ways of doing this.

OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE

I've spent most of this week (and last) attempting to finish my Shap Abbey drawing and also making the little sketches I've been uploading to my Flickr pages. Drawing in public is not easy for me, and I don't think I'll ever make a good drawing (certainly not a polished one) in public, unless I'm in total private and entirely relaxed, but facing this particular fear can only be good for me, both as a person and as an artist and creative individual.

Although I have drawn in public before (many years ago, when I was a 6th former, and later, as a student) it's never been something that I've been comfortable with. I envy and respect anyone who has the courage and the single mindedness to stand in a busy town centre and draw what's around them, as the artists in the Urban Sketchers Blog and Flickr group do. There's some really great work being done by the artists in this group, and there is a great deal of fine work on Flickr as a whole.

I don't think I'd have made the 'outside my comfort zone' drawings if it hadn't been for Flickr, a photo' sharing site ideal for artists, both budding and experienced. Nothing motivates better than an audience, and Flickr is a great way both to see other artists' work (usually sketches, quite often 'Moleskins') and also to put your art forward for criticism, though mostly this appears to be less analytical criticism and more uncritical praise. Still, if you're an artist who usually prefers to keep your artwork to yourself and who perhaps lacks the confidence to dive straight in and exhibit your work in a library, gallery or other public place, this might be a good way of sticking your toe in the waters of publically displaying your artwork. It's free to register and costs nothing to upload your artwork using the extremely easy upload pages. You can add a profile and group your pictures into folders, ideal if you want to upload themed work or a sketchbook. You can then submit your work to relevant groups, so people who are interested in that subject matter, style, gentre watever, can find your work and maybe, find their way back to your photostream (your gallery, in other words).

My experience with Flikr has so far been a positive one, not only is it helping me to motivate myself into facing one of my fears, it has also got me drawing from life, something which I am apt to neglect in favour of the comfort of working from my own photographs. It's also leading me down avenues along which I'm quite happy to be lead, for instance, today I found myself adding words to my drawing, something which I've not really done to a great extent before, even though finding some way of meshing my written and my artwork is something I've fretted over for a few years. I don't know why it never occurs to me that fretting is the least productive way of working out problems, especially problems of an aesthetic or creative nature. In art it's best to work your way through dilemas through doing. Maybe the Flickr environment (or the motivation it provides) can act as a catalyst for things that I might just have mulled over for weeks before? We'll see.

ROOTS

I often wonder why I go through these periods of being more visual, then cycling back again to writing again? In the past, when I was relatively guilt free, it was easier to free-wheel these periods of creative flux. Now that I am increasingly aware of time’s elastic growing taut I worry at my own lack of sticking power.

I wonder if some frenzied, over stimulated part of my brain simply wants a rest? I imagine it steaming away like a broken television (of the old cathode ray variety), while another rested area of the brain takes over for a while. I generally feel less emotional, more reflective and neutral when I draw. I can listen to talk radio, music, songs, words, I can listen to conversation, I feel generally more happy when I’m doing something visual than when I’m writing, then I need silence; I’m tense, fraught, the slightest noise winds me up (though noise in general, other people’s noise, tends to wind me up). I guess it must be those opposing halves of the brain having a different effect on my behaviour.

On Sunday afternoon and evening I enjoyed giving into this impulse to draw. While listening to the Cricket I worked on my pen and ink drawing, and then I drew a little outside. At the top of our garden, where the shed and garage used to be is a raised platform of grey and brittle concrete. Dad dismantled both shed and garage about 20 years ago, when he made the garden gates. I remember how we found a family of dead rats crushed beneath the shed after it had fallen, their feet sticking out from under the rubble, perfectly clean and pink, like victims of a bomb blast.

A few years ago the people who own the houses that were built (again, about 20 years ago) at the bottom of our garden planted conifers up against the dividing fence. These have grown and now their roots are breaking up our concrete. Weeds and grass spurt up in the cracks, eroding the concrete even further. It’s annoying, but also the textures of the aging, mossy, slowly decomposing concrete has its beauty. I enjoyed making a few small drawings of them and the old flower pots that have become abandoned up there over the years, where only dandelions and weeds flourish.

The roots edging their way into our garden, crumbling the edges, seems an oddly appropriate metaphor. Thoughts too have their way of impinging on peace of mind (the territory of composure). It’s difficult to fend off these subtle intrusions. Perhaps the best medicine for my fretting and anxiety is simply to draw or write the blues away.

PERFECTIBLE...SORT OF HAIGA INSPIRED...

Well not strictly haiga inspired, but something I've been mulling over for a few years now, how to bring together the twin worlds of my visual and literary practice. Back in 1989 I self-published a small book of poetry called Blackberry Jam, accompanying my poems with my own illustrations, but since then my attempts have been sporadic. Back (why do I keep going back?) in about 2002 I posted work in progress of a drawing but wasn't really sure how to present the progress in a way that added anything to either the words or the image. I've been, for a long time, sporadic in my efforts, not that I'm not continually doing something but that the somethings are often disjointed, disconnected, I start things that fizzle out and I never finish them.

So maybe I'll not finish this new idea either (maybe not finishing is a good thing, as it means there might still be something left to achieve), this week has been one of those weeks where my head fizzes with ideas. This has it's good and its bad points, the bad being the resulting sense of confusion, and the exhaustion that follows. I have to pluck something out of the fizzle, and here goes.

My idea (actually not a new one for me, though I've never attempted to perfect it in any way) is to simply make an artwork out of the recorded stages of my progress. In this case, I'm starting on a drawing that's already underway, but while the iron's hot...

Below are both my work in progress and the image and words combined, I have yet to think of a word to describe this. I do have ideas about what I'm going to do with them however, more later.

DRAWINGS

At Wolverhampton Art Gallery at the moment is an exhibition by an artist called Anthony Boswell. Tony and I were students together at Birmingham Poly, so it was really nice to see his work. The exhibition is in a small, well lit area to the left of the main entrance, and the pencil drawings are displayed in an informal way which suits the intimate, domestic subject matter well. None are glazed, but instead they are hung on the wall from bulldog clips, the air of physical fragility this method of presentation suggests mirrors the sombre and fragile subject matter. There is something quite melancholy and slightly claustrophobic about the mostly domestic interiors, my favourites are the drawing of the wedding dressing, and the portrait which is basically the back of someone's head reflected in a mirror. Very subtle. They made me think of the Sickert, Gilman school of English artists from the begining of the last century with a similar quiet intensity. Very nice pencil drawings, nice to see an exhibition of monochrome work for a change too.

Upstairs at the gallery is an excellent exhibition of works on paper, and Tony's one man show complements this nicely.

Detail of work in progress - Coloured pencil drawing of a beach

Angels and Demons

There's a lot of drawing in this month's The Artist and Artist & Illustrators magazines. In fact A&I is dedicated to drawing, and there's quite a lot of black and white work in it too. I particularly love the slick and gorgeous drawings by Marie Harnett, they're based on film stills and remind me of a graphite version of Gerhard Richter or Cindy Sherman. I'm not sure how the artist gets around the copyright issues in using someone else's work as a basis for her own, but I love film and the frames she's chosen plus the skill with which she achieves her work is a pretty mesmerizing concoction.

I've had the enjoyable task of choosing £250 of Derwent art materials for the Derwent prize I was awarded at the Patchings Art Festival. To say I was like a kid in a sweetwshop was an understatement.

I'm also thrilled that someone has purchased one of the pieces I have had exhibited at the RBSA's Prize Exhibition. Mum received a phone call today to break the news, though I already had an inkling as Mum and me had seen the red sticker when we went to see the exhibition last Thursday. And I'm dead chuffed about it!

Finally, shocking and sad to hear of Michael Jackson's early death. Michael Jackson's Thriller and Off The Wall albums will always remind me of making preparatory drawings and paintings for my A level art exam. I was obsessed with Caravaggio then, and painted a self portrait by lamplight. The memory of the heat of the lamp and the warm early summer night will forever be conjured up for me by that exciting, energetic, melodic and funky music.

It's very sad that someone who brought such happiness to the lives of so many people apparently had such a troubled existence. It's also so typical that in the space of a few hours Michael Jackson has gone from 'Wacko' to angel. Death, it seems, has made Michael Jackson a hit again.

Doodles I made the other night while 'resting' in the sunshine!

FINISHED...

I've finished my tree drawing, or got as far as I could as tommorow I have to deliver it to Cheltenham to enter it in the Jerwood Drawing Prize. I entered a few years ago and got nowhere, but at least it's motivated me to complete this rather ambitious drawing. I might have given up otherwise.

The finished drawing. Or as near finished as it'll ever be!

CLIMBING THE TREE

The progress continues...

...VERY slowly...

I'm not sure whether I'll make the deadline I've set myself for this picture, there's a competition I wanted to enter, I entered a few years ago but didn't get selected. I don't think I stand much chance this year either, the preference seems to be for modernist conceptual drawing. But having this deadline in view at least motivates me. This drawing has been such a slog, if I didn't have a reason to do it I'd have given up ages ago.

SLOW PROGRESS

See that grey splodge at the top left corner? I had an accident...ink water spillage!

Taking advantage of the nice weather last week I took my drawing outside and crouched over (and sat upon) it on the grass in our back garden. I ended up pretty stiff and achy but at least I managed a little progress. At the same time I've been working on a smaller drawing (I'll post progress on this later), combining 2 drawing interests of mine, trees and running water. Dark running water to be exact. One of the pictures I am exhibting at the RBSA at the moment is called 'Dark water, Cumbria'. Something about dark water is intoxicating to me. Maybe I have a Narcissus complex? Maybe it just reminds me of the way my imagination works.

I have fresh dreams at the moment too, returning to my old obsession (nothing has come of it yet) of combining my visual and literary work. I have an idea of drawing a tree and hanging Haiku from its branches. I may even get round to doing it some day. But despite the pain my big drawing of a Scottish graffiti tree is causing me, I still haven't let go of my desire to make a REALLY BIG drawing. The other day as I was walking back into the house, the white painted wall (it's actually the external wall of our house, but internal to our verandah) cried out to me to have a long, lithe sheet of paper hung on it, tall as myself, taller even. A tree perhaps? Or maybe a waterfall? Dark water again, with trees dipping their moss covered toes into it? Whatever (if ever) I decide to draw, I'll have to get my hands on some new drawing tools, maybe I could make my own? I used to really admire Van Gogh's ink drawings, Van Gogh used a reed pen, and then there are a whole list of things you could improvise with, so I've read. Van Gogh's drawings, which I saw many years ago in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, were not small either!


I've been exploring Flickr lately, there is just so much wonderful art on there, though like much that is on-line, just surfing is time consuming. I particularly like the work of Paul Heaston, his street scenes are just crammed with detail, wonderful pen and ink work. Paul's work also appears on Urban Sketchers a fantastic site, where artists submit their drawings of urban scenes. I wish I had the courage to stand out in the street and draw (though I must admit, I don't find my actual surroundnigs very inspiring), I did it years ago, when I was a student, and always found it nerve wracking. Now my nerves are even less robust, I don't know if I could actually get out there and do it. I prefer the sanctity and safety of my own 4 walls. Maybe I could try drawing from a window? But I don't know if my heart would be in it. My heart is deep in the woods, with the light bleeding down through the leaves, the earth smells pungent and damp, cool in the shade despite the sun's heat, and even the lightest, least significant movement of a bird or a squirrel makes a resounding crack or rustle as the little thing scampers through the undergrowth.

It's may not be my immediate reality, but it's still out there, and it's in here too. Stored, cherished, a part of me.

CLIMBING THE TREE

I began my graffiti tree picture full of enthusiasm, undaunted by the immense white page stretching out before me, or by the fact that a tiny pen nib (like the kind I use) has got an awful lot of ground to cover here. The base of the tree went fine, I got lost in mapping out the bumps of the trunk, the lumpy texture of the very base of the tree where trunk begins to turn into root, taking it's nourishment from the hidden place beneath our feet (the way art and literature are made, the brain taking its invisible nourishment from all manner of ordinary things, turning them into something magical, if you're lucky). I dwelt so long at the base of that tree, enjoying the chance to recreate the plush moss that clung to the bark, that I was in danger of forgetting about the top of the tree, the leaves and branches, where the light is captured and turned into energy.

So I made a start with the branches, and this is where I came unstuck. Sitting on the bed where I had been working I found that I could hardly reach the top of the drawing board, let alone see to draw those leaves in! It tried crouching over it, propping it up against a wall, turning the drawing upside down and on its side, finally I made a little progress by plonking a cushion on the drawing and actually sitting on it, crouched over, so I could draw the top of the picture. Much back ache, wrist ache, numb ankles (and unhappy accidental spillages or dirty ink water) later, I have a fragment of my picture underway. But I've a feeling this is going to be a much more painful process than I had envisaged. So much for ambition. It certainly does lead you down some tricky avenues.

HEAD IN THE LEAVES...

The last time I put some concerted time into drawing was 2005, the year England won the Ashes. Since then, my life's gone through a lot of changes. Anyway, this year England are attempting to regain the Ashes from Australia, and I'm putting more time and effort into my drawing again. Back then I had this crazy ambition to do a really BIG drawing, it's one of those ambitions I like to comfort myself with just before I fall asleep at night, it helps me drift off, though not always for long.



A little more done...

A few weeks ago I began an attempt at my 'really BIG' drawing at last, on A1 watercolour paper, it's one of my graffiti trees, based on a photograph I took when I visited Scotland, back in 2005. Scotland has the most immense trees, dripping moss and history, craggy veterans, ‘champion' trees like the ones at Ardkinglass Woodland Garden, they seem to personify something of the spirit of Scotland itself. Trees are one of my obsessive subjects (I've done so few drawings really, each one takes such a long time to complete, so I've not given myself enough time to truly obsess over too many things, maybe that's just as well). Graffiti is a subject I obssess over in my photography, whenever I visit a castle or a National Trust property I always end up finding some piece of graffiti, I've got dozens of photographs of graffiti stored digitally on my computer, and doing something with these (a hybrid poetry/art project) is another of my favourite 'sheep' that has guided me into slumberland on more than one occasion. A veteran tree with a name chiselled into its bark, still clear after 40 or more years, seems to me the most poignant image, a memento mori of human fragility, as compared with one of these leafy veterans of several hundred years. Even in its eventual decay a tree provides the most reassuring and tangible image of rebirth - in the thousands of smaller life forms that survive in the decaying wood long after the tree itself has died.

Detail of the base of the tree