Hello there,
I’ve just finished around six hours of drawing and I have been positively fizzing, sometimes the lines and marks feel almost preprogrammed as if already drawn and then only to be transcripted onto another surface. As anyone who draws knows thoughts flow through ones mind when gifted with a particularly fertile spell of creativity.
As the marks were flowing all sorts of connections, interactions and thoughts seemed to manifest in a form of abstract communication between myself and my page. This is when the notion of drawing being such a strong metaphor for life sprang to mind.
Moving to more practical thoughts I have been working on a drawing that has been weeks in the making – this I feel has been strong and been weak, I have had it firmly within my grasp and control and equally lost it, blindly continuing hoping to find a way forward with it. Tonight I think I found its way once again. Fantastic.
I have also been working on something slightly different for which I have been filling pages and pages of a sketchbook in very rough working drawings – almost exercises in an effort to enable different – new elements to be brought into my work. May I be so bold as to say watch this space. Thank you as always for reading.
So, over what seems a very long time I really feel I have finally managed to integrate very respectable amounts of drawing into my everyday life.
This has had an unexpected effect on my normal day to day working life – which can frankly be mundanely soul destroying sometimes. (I will add this caviat where my job is concerned though – I am well looked after and treated with privilege so cannot complain about some of the other more average groans). Anyway I digress, a higher productivity – much higher has lead to me becoming a happier, more contented employee. As I see it everyone wins here. A happy employee equals a more productive one as does a happy artist.
An old boxing adage says a happy fighter is a dangerous fighter – that applies to every walk of life I think and it has certainly made me more aware of what I am doing – being happier that is has sharpened things and lead to far more productive time being spent – and has given me huge ambition – ambition for which I had long ago given over as lost.
With all of that off of my chest. Whilst driving along a London road several days ago listening to music I had what I can only describe as a vision of a drawing that I knew was the way forward, creatively speaking. Perhaps as a result of what I was listening to precipitated further and unexpected thought on an issue that was already in the forefront of my mind – I have no idea? I will say is this: I am in no way, shape or form religious or believe in any kind of spirit or benevolent deity – therefore bolts of inspiration are an unusual thing for me – usually these things come as a byproduct of many hours of work and careful thought – not a product of some kind of stereotypical, romantic artistic intervention from above. But welcome in whatever form anyway!
Some of the things I have been considering over the last few days are the individual elements within my drawings, what they say, how they could be perceived, how I can develop these elements, what they mean to me, what I like, and what I would like to steer away from. For me critical (maybe blinkered) thinking is a very healthy, objective and essential part of any creative endeavour.
As is per usual thank you for anyone who has read this disjointed piece of writing which has allowed my thoughts to ramble into cyberspace. I wish you all well.
Hello reader!
Recently I have had the luxury of some unexpected time away from my day job. This has resulted in some obsessively intense sessions of drawing. These sessions have been incredibly beneficial to my practice and my state of mind. I feel I have crossed another threshold in my drawing, I have actually started to believe that I may just be able to pursue my lifelong passion at a higher level than just scribbling and scrawling in front of the TV as a form of escapism. I have also realised that I have been doing myself a huge disservice in that I have seemingly been on cruise control in terms of artistic rigour (without sounding like an utter prick) – drawing in front of the TV, giving little of no thought to a serious future within the visual arts, lacking the ambition and drive to develop my work – all WITHOUT actually realising.
How delusionally blinkered can one individual be?
Since this latest bout of luxurious activity I feel I have become far more intune with what my work is, what I should be doing, the manner and how in which I should be completing it and I have for the first time since graduating the way it could/ should/ will develop. It is incredibly exciting for me.
The tedious nature of some aspects of my practice mean monotony can be a problem – especially when I am asking a lot of myself on a particular piece so I have taken to putting YouTube on in the background (usually videos of lectures/ documentaries relating to my favourite areas of art history). This I find is just enough of a subconscious distraction to allow part of my mind to remain active without leaving my chair – hence upping output and focus. Brilliant.
Another thing I have found – which is probably completely obvious is the fact that hard work – I mean genuine hard work makes an incredible difference to whatever I am doing. It has shown me the way forward (whilst driving me slowly insane).
I have had enough of unfulfilled potential and what iffing so on this wave of positivity I am going for it and pushing myself harder than I ever have done to see exactly what comes out.
Signed happy artist.
(Please excuse the poor iPhone image)
(Note to reader. I have no structure on which to write anything considered, I just wanted to indulge my love of writing about something I do indeed love so apologies for a passage of nonsensical writing)
When I am drawing I feel it is a love hate relationship. I love the act of drawing and making marks in a way that is peculiar to myself, a method in which to leave my own mark on the world, no matter how small, leaving a record, a comment of what I have been thinking or feeling at the time of each mark. What I hate is the fact that it flows out of me but is then bottle necked at the tip of the pen or pencil. You see I have developed an intricate style of drawing that feels so natural and so like second nature that sometimes I barely need to think about what is coming out. The problem is it is so time consuming – sometimes to even make the smallest gains. I don’t tend to know how the drawing will ever look when it comes to that magical moment of perceived completion, however, I tend to work in waves that cover the paper which builds in stages and can envisage these…this is when the size of the task ahead always sprawls out in front of me – I sigh.
I think I am slightly obsessive about some aspects of my work and this is not always a beneficial thing, sometimes though, just sometimes it is. It helps me ensure the honestly and integrity of each drawing I make. It has taught me to focus and enabled me to plunge ever deeper into each piece. This I love. Sometimes though it is a fucking heavy weight to bear. Things must be so, sometimes the smallest detail that would never be noticed by someone else viewing it makes the largest difference to me. It’s a pain in the arse.
I’ve always considered my work…well considered but organic, scrub that I’ve always prided myself on this and it has always been a founding principle within my work. I love the unstructured structure of what goes into my head to what comes out of the pen on the paper. This I know is a shockingly romantic notion but to me art IS romance. This may of been instilled in me by the beautifully pastel colours and idyllic scenes from the impressionists I feverishly studied as a child from the safety of the family sofa. (I know the reality was rather different to this biscuit tin notion. That of artistic rebels struggling to work, live, survive and be acknowledged by the then art world). What is wrong with this romantic notion? Well for me nothing, it enriches what I do and also allows me to tip my hat to the sumptuous past.
Anyway that brings an abrupt end to this instalment of my self indulgence, if anyone has managed to get to this point – I thank you.
In terms of being able to draw and the time it takes I struck gold by being two days holiday from work quite unexpectedly. This prompted me begin to plan my free time the night before and decided it would be a good idea to review the ideas dragnet that is a multitude of sketchbooks and loose sheets with drawings and records of undeveloped and unrealised ideas on them. Through circumstance and lack of space I was forced for several years to work specifically from sketchbooks – the ultimate in a portable studio. The downside to this was although I was always recording a large volume of ideas almost none of them cam to any fruition. It also made me lazy in a way as I knew I was limited and in the mindset that my work should be operating on a larger level. This of course is ridiculous as any resourceful artist would of just made do and used the resources available to its further point. I however did not.
This has almost become a blessing in disguise of sorts as I now have a relatively large bank of work that is yet to be explored, picked from, developed and integrated into more meaningful pieces that I am now in a position to make. The issue of scale has also influenced my drawings also because I like to work to a small scale now (although larger pieces are in the pipeline), I find it helps to keep me fresh and interested in everything I do. Leaving aside my lifelong passion for the visual arts it is still important for anyone practicing their craft to remain engaged and willing to go through the rigour of producing work at the avant grade of their respective practice – if you understand what I mean?
Anyway, the reviewing of older work and ideas can definitely be fruitful and would advise anyone to do it from time to time. This allows parts of the portfolio to remain firmly in the past – whilst learning from those parts and other parts to be pulled into the present to be used to developed.
This will almost sound pretentious beyond measure but how exciting is it to be able to explore any idea that enters ones mind, it is akin in my books to the dreamlike power of flight – creative flying if you will.
