Robin

A recent portrait from my sketchbook. I don't use pencils very often, but this reminded me of how pleasant they can be to work with. I like how fineliners, which is my tool of choice, force you to be decisive. The pencil, though let's you engage with your picture a little more. Anyhow, I think this came out nicely.

Fierce Dragon Pony

First drawing of the year.

On the Ferry

Mr Holdstock and the very expressive top of his head. We were on the Stranraer - Belfast ferry. It's all felt tips, one of the few times those have worked for me. From a few years ago.

NYC Cartoon Club

2 collaborative cartoons made with Dan Meth. In the left one, we each drew every other panel, whereas the right hand page is more of a mishmash. The idea is that you don't plan the cartoon at all. You just riff off of what the other person has drawn and add whatever comes to mind. And you have to work fast. 

Hello! Nice to meet you.

Two new friends in my sketchbook. They eat bread crumbs and enjoy listening to records. Can they crash on your sofa?

Girl in a Bottle

This Bear

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... is a bit angry, but mostly just confused.

Hello Again

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Yes, I've been away for a while, but now is the time for new drawings, new words, new things.

I had a hectic time towards the end of the year, largely due to a dissertation that needed to be finished. Christmas was good though, and I've had a proper rest and feel quite fresh. I spent last week in Amsterdam and got myself a little Moleskine, the Japanese album style, which folds out like an accordion. I'm going to try and do something special with that format eventually, but for now I'll show you guys some drawings I did. It's mostly stuff from the Rijks Museum. Here we go:

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This is drawn from a 17th century painting. The man is Jan Valckenburgh, director general of the dutch West India Company, which traded in in gold and slaves. The portrait was painted by Daniel Vertangen. The other figure was a doll in a dollhouse.

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This lady's name was Maria Van Strijp. My friend Georgina and couldn't quite read her facial expression. Is she stifling a laugh or about to cry? I was trying to capture this ambiguous quality in her face. The artist was Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck (17th century)

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The front of a giant model of a ship. More precisely, an english man-of-war called The Prince Charles. (17th Century)

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This double portrait of my friend Shannon is not from the Rijks. (21st century)

Colouring Book

I was recently asked to colour in this spread from my sketchbook for a publication and also to remove all parts of the sketchbook (ie the gutter and edges). Unfortunately, I didn't have access to the sketchbook in question but I have been getting more confident with Photoshop lately, so I did some cutting and pasting, using pieces from other sketchbooks and there you have it:

I always prefer to work with my hands, a pen and paper if I can help it, but I am discovering too, that Photoshop can be a fantastic tool if you know how to use it. The number of things it can do is so vast that even though I've been using it for years, I feel like I've only skimmed the surface.

Return of the Creatures

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Well, it's been a while but I'm back in Edinburgh and back in business. I spent a few August days in Berlin, which was very good and interesting - not least artwise. I've got some newly discovered stuff to blog about and some new drawings too. Like this shy and melancholy monkey-cat. So this is just a quick hello. More to come!

Conserving

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These are drawings I made while looking through a book called Conserving (by Daniel and Geo Fuchs). The book features photographs of animals and humans preserved in formaldehyde.

I worked with Aquacolour Monolith pens, which are really starting to grow on me. They are quite hard and don't blend very much unless you use water, which I usually don't, and don't erase well. But as I grow more and more used to them I'm starting to appreciate their qualities. The colours are great and when you work out how to combine them they work really well together. The trick is lay down subtle layers over and over, until they mesh.

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What's This Now?

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A Friend...

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...in my notebook.

Scientific Animatic

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So, it's been a while since I posted anything substantial and that's mostly due to my spending less time on the internet and more time fretting about college work (David Foster Wallace said in an interview something to the effect of "I spend 10% of my time writing and 90% worrying about not writing", which rings so true.). I'm at a stage where I'm redrawing my pencilled frames in ink and adding detail, which is very slow going. But when I shoot the days work it feels wonderful to see the finished shots.

Soon, I'll be posting some stills from what I've been doing, but, for now, I thought I'd show some frames from my animatic. For those unfamiliar with the animation process, an animatic is basically a filmed storyboard - a kind of mock-up of the film, which allows you to get a sense of its pacing and to edit it before you start drawing. Initially, this was going to be almost the whole film; a lot of patterns depicting quarks, atoms, dna molecules and so forth. I had a lot of input from my friend Andy Eschbacher, who is a quantum physicist. The thing is, it's impossible to draw atoms and sub-atomic particles because they're like nothing we can imagine. So these drawings are only symbolical.

Since the beginning of the project, the film has changed quite a lot. It now centers on two characters (I posted a character sheet a while back). Anyways, here it is:

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I Don't Know What This Means But It Means Something

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This is also a product of my recent intense sketchbooking phase. I went back to a lot of old pages and filled them in with pretty random images. I'd use photos from books and off the internet and just draw whatever appealed to me. It feels like a kind of collaging. Once a few different characters/objects have been added, meanings and narratives begin to form and then I just go on fleshing out and enhancing whatever story is in there. Sometimes it's more a feeling than an obvious story but that's ok. Here, for example, I began with an old sketch from a photo of Patricia Highsmith smoking. Then I added the rest, improvising some patterns and colours. I like to imagine that this picture is a story. But what is it about?

My House

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I was trying to fill out my sketchbooks a while ago, to submit with my portfolio, and ended up doing quite a few drawings of my flat and the objects in it. It's a good place to draw; one of those old fashioned Edinburgh flats with high ceilings and a bit aged and eccentric. Here's a drawing of the hallway, complete with a ghost - a portrait on the page behind it showing through the tracing paper:

Our kitchen window at night:

...and just the window pane with raindrops and streetlights:

Animal People