Like a moth to a flame...

Or in this case, a light bulb. These are the moths that flutter around in my brain when I have an idea for a drawing. They flit aimlessly, bouncing off the walls of my skull. Some of them get fried up and die but every now and again one settles on something half decent. 

That wasn't the intention of this drawing, I just wanted to draw a bigger light bulb. The thought only occurred to me as it was nearly finished that it was quite a nice metaphor and that something subconscious was at play. I like light bulbs as an image, they're quite harsh and give a strong contrast between the darkness and the light. I did tell myself I wasn't going to do any more intense blackness with the biro for a while but all too soon I returned to it, like...well, you know the simile. 

Flying too close to the Moon...

A while back I drew the Minotaur, hesitating over the agonising decision of whether to make a break for freedom or stay a prisoner of the only home he'd ever known...a sort of mythological Stockholm syndrome. So here's another subversion of the original myth. I had the idea of drawing Icarus and I was going to keep it simple but then as my over active imagination assumed control, Icarus became a woman...then the Sun became the Moon (of course)...then obviously nothing but the infinite blackness of space would do for a backdrop. I could never be accused of cutting corners, that's at least (I stopped counting) six layers of crosshatched and scribbled black ballpoint, the fine kind not even medium! Why do I put myself through it? 

The Moon proved quite troublesome too but I ended up experimenting at the eleventh hour with pigment marker blender over the biro which turned out quite nicely, just smoothed some of the harshness. The image above is a black and white version, below is how the drawing actually looks in real life. The blender turned the biro a bit blue, which I do like but I think the whole drawing would need to be a bit blue too. Another experiment for another time...

You can either run from it or learn from it...

A little slice of history...Quite some time ago I used to draw a lot of pencil portraits, both of humans and animals. I hadn't really done much drawing for a long time and then some colleagues and I started to draw pictures of each other during slow afternoons at work and it turned out that mine were a pretty good likeness. Once people got wind of the fact I could draw, I started to get a fair few requests for them and very quickly became thoroughly miserable. I was enlarging photos, sketching, tracing the sketch onto nicer paper, checking and double checking every last detail...it was mentally draining. It had to stop.

So here's what I dislike about drawing portraits: Firstly, they take such a soul destroyingly long time. I used to spend hours painstakingly rendering every precise detail as best as I could until I wanted to cry. Secondly, I don't get peoples fascination or love for them, I'd rather die than have a drawing of myself up on the wall. Thirdly, when done like this, although it is a skill in itself, it only ever felt like copying, there's no room for error or scope for creative licence. And finally, I began to really dislike drawing in pencil. Everything about pencils started to annoy me, I didn't like sharpening them every five minutes, I didn't like how many different grades were needed just for one drawing and I could never get a dark enough shadow. 

So I started doodling about with a biro and the rest is history. There's many, many brilliant portrait artists and styles out there and I'm not discrediting their work (or their customers) in any way, it's just not for me. I don't regret doing them, they brought people happiness and quite often brought tears to their eyes which is a high accolade indeed and I might not have developed the style(s) I use today without them. I'm not exactly an overnight success and could probably have carried on and made a business out of them but it just felt wrong. It lacked creative integrity. But I wanted to share the story, thanks folks, I feel cleansed of the past now.