As well as just using a very ugly (beautiful) digital process to my work.. I have really tried to keep on top of my drawing. As I feel I have lacked in keeping that up. I have a real push and pull relationship with drawing at the moment. Let's see where this goes.

Bones

Over the past month I have had my second year ND students finish and have a great final exhibition. I wish them the best of luck in the future. In my own work I have been trying to push the use of digital processes in my work, I've been trying to use a photocopier in order to help me process the rules of a straight and simple composition and then reworking over time using the same process. These are some outcomes that I have scanned and edited. I have used them for visuals for live gigs, almost in a photobooth way..gradually the process is revealed from the first photocopy straight through to the last image.

5 second poses

Recently got back into the habit of going to life drawing again after a small break, it's been so nice to fall into a new level of concentration when drawing. The movement within line is what's gripping me at the moment and the accidental mark making made by not fixing charcoal drawings.

Play Nice

Also working on some illustrations around the phrase "Play Nice".. possibly some sort of kid's tshirts soon??

Happy Cemetery

I've started work recently on a project to do with 'The Happy Cemetery' in Romania.. I came across it by chance whilst working at a school under a pile of papers. It's origin is thanks to Stan Petras back in the 1930s and has been taken on by the Pop family to this day. It has over 800 'gravestones', most depicting two sides to the deceased's life. Side A would show a nice image of how they lived most days and Side B would show how they died or how they were best known in the village. I thought I'd share with you this point of reference and show you some work inspired by this.

Timberland

Also recently I did a tshirt with Timberland.. it's all sold out now though sadly! but you could get it in a lovely blue and the classic white! .. It was based around all my work based on woods and folk tales from last year. I have another tee with a friends company which I shall show once I get my copy in t'post!

iPhone backgrounds

I made some little iPhone backgrounds.. you can just click and save them and use them at your own free will. Just a casual affair really.

hey sport

Some sports illustrations I have been working on! I do believe this is the first time I have ever drawn anything to do with sports! It's been a fun little project which has helped me focus on how can the normal day-to-day scenarios be played out by an exaggerated figure. Also I'm quite a fan of how bloating the figures seem to be.

Trains

Yesterday I visited Holly Wales for some Sunday drawing at her tip-top studio OPEN. Whilst talking to Holly about some recent research I've been up to, it was suggested to have a sift through the great collection of reference books that they have in the studio! So, I nabbed a couple of photos and spent the afternoon drawing trains. lovely.

Drawing

Recently I have been thinking about the term and act of 'Drawing'. It by definition is based around the act of marks onto a surface in which to create form and shape. Last week I asked a student to 'draw with scissors instead of the same 2b pencil', a phrase coined from the Matisse exhibition I had seen some time ago.

Matisse said "the paper cut-out allows me to draw in the colour... Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it... I draw straight into the colour".


Henri Matisse - Blue Nudes

I imagined using the scissors to construct out a negative shape with which to draw or subtract form from, which would leave the student with a broken boundary away from the paper. Instead, when I returned the student had chosen to carve and scratch into the paper much like using the scissors as a pen or pencil. Now by my own fault of not explaining fully what I meant, I found something which I would like to inform a future workshop.

If a pen is used to make a mark.. why not use pencils and pens to cut? or rulers to create wonky lines?

..maybe helping us to "draw upon the definition of drawing"?