Time is short and the art, long...

A question I get asked a lot is, "how long did that take?" I'm not sure why timescales intrigue people so much, perhaps it's to do with our finite lifespans, but I think it's probably because we're so used to the immediacy of photography that we're fascinated with why someone would spend a long time creating an image that's just to look at.

It's a question I rarely ask other people or think about with my own drawings. Minutes, hours or years, it's just worth doing and I've never timed anything, never know what time or day I started or finished, so it's a question I can't really answer. I tend to just make up what feels like an adequate amount, I don't know if they're impressed by quickly or aeons...

All I can really say is that I posses the oxymoronic qualities of both drawing very slowly and having a short attention span. There are times when I frustrate myself with my approach and there are times when I'm glad of it. When I work slowly, things are more considered, done with care, there's plenty of thinking time. When I work quickly, there's energy and immediacy to it. When I stop regularly, things change and evolve as I go along, it's organic. When I work quickly, I capture a moment, a snapshot of what's in my head right then.

These skulls all took about half an hour each, I didn't want to fuss them or make them look like photos, they're sketchy and imperfect but I like them (except the green one, green biro can go back to whatever hole it crawled out from, goodbye.) But they're procrastination, Nero fiddling whilst Rome is burning, I've got loads of detailed, lengthy drawings that I should be working on, people are waiting and they'll want to know how long it took...how long is a piece of string? (according to a ten year old I was chatting to recently it's "probably about 30 centimetres," I might just use that as my answer in future.)

I never try to find you...

I've been away. Physically, mentally, metaphorically...but I feel like I'm back now with the completion of this. Creativity comes with it's own set of Faustian terms and conditions. It drags you out to sea sometimes. Or leaves you on the shore when you wanted to get in the boat.

This is part one of two commissioned drawings and the only instruction for this one was to contain two skulls and have ravens involved somewhere. When I draw for other people I see it as a shared idea and what they had in mind when they asked for it is probably definitely very different to what I had in mind...but if you aren't specific, you get something from the recesses of my brain and this idea was already half formed, I was just waiting for the remnants to catch up. I like to weave a bit of a narrative, so it's anthropomorphic skeletons caught between life and death, with a floral vibe. I can't put it any simpler than that...

None of us can tell...

I'm not a witch or a hippy, I don't believe that quartz can save your soul (I don't believe in souls for that matter) nor do I think that Martians built the pyramids in thirty seconds, but the tiny illustrations on a tarot deck have enchanted me since childhood. I haven't a clue what they're meant to tell you about life (I'm guessing bugger all) I just enjoy looking at the pictures. I suppose The Hermit resonates with me (metaphorically of course), I'm no socialite, I spend hours by myself scribbling away at black skies and if I was small enough to put a shell on my head I probably would...I think that bit is optional advice in the fortune tent. If I had a quieter mind, I might be inclined to illustrate the full set but I'll say with some certainty...unlikely.  

The Hermit, 2017, ballpoint pen on paper

To be cut adrift...

Every now and again I lose myself (not in a good way) and need something to bring me back into the solar system. Drawing nature usually sets me right so this sketchy little envelope woodpecker let me know I've still got something. And I really threw caution to the wind and got the red biro out...

Once I was in a position to re-enter the atmosphere of the ballpoint pen, I took this little tattoo request as well. It was to be inspired by The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen and needed to include a boat and a lyric. The rest was up to me.

I've always understood it as a song about death and our inexorable (and fast) journey towards it (did I say I was back in a good mood?) so we decided on the reaper in his boat. If he's got one. Has he? Since he's open to interpretation and not real and art is subjective I'm saying yes, he does. 

I liked the idea of repeating the moon so the scythe and boat both became crescents, which all fit neatly into the shape of the moon in the background. Neat doesn't come naturally to me but a plan came together on this occasion... 

Here's the original little sketch I did to throw the ideas out, for once I didn't deviate too far from the original but that's neither a good or a bad thing, just a fact. Apologies for the scrappy, ripped off Instagram pictures but the scanner is also orbiting it's own uninhabitable zone somewhere. I just wanted to talk about drawing for a bit... 

Starman...

Mr Ziggy Stardust (the second) celebrates his twelfth birthday soon and I wanted to capture some of the softer, faded appearance he's taken on over the past couple of years. It's been a while since I've drawn like this, I used to do animal portraits all the time (why!?) but this is the first I think I've ever done in ballpoint. I could have taken it further but I like a drawing to look like a drawing, even when the level of detail needs to be realistic. I don't often give out advice on drawing, I'm no expert and I can't explain how I do it anyway, but one thing I do say is if you want it to be perfect, take a photo instead. Something should be like you after you take your hands away...

Like empty shells...

It often only occurs to me after a drawing is finished where the idea might have come from. I've probably said it before many times but it's subconscious, I find it very difficult to come up with something when I think "I'd like to include x/y/z in a drawing," but let my mind roam around and things appear. This, I now see, has some science fiction elements (no shit, it's a shell the size of a tower block!); Ray Bradbury's earpiece shells from Farenheit 451, Arthur C Clarke's imposing monoliths...none of this is intentional but it creeps in and curls up by my feet and I hear it breathing softly in the background, or is that just the snoring pug? 

I promised myself I would finish this before the year was out and for once I set a goal and stuck to it, long may that continue. It was a polishing up of an old idea and I can lay it to rest now, though I don't think it'll truly be the end; I like the uncanny feeling of unnatural scale. I'm looking forward to the stillness of January and the chance to rifle through my notes and scribbles for the next old/new thing. 

Happy New Year. 

Either it is, or it isn't...

Inspired by one of the most unusual things I've ever been presented with as a gift. In real life, both these beauties were sadly deceased, so this is the backstory. I'm not going to provide too much narrative; grief speaks for itself. A friend who saw this drawing today described moths as tiny humans with cloaks on creeping about at night. So if creepy, night-dwelling, dead stuff is your bag, this ones on me. Happy Halloween. 

What's deceased and what's alive...

Everything you see here has come straight from my mind. The inaccuracies, the bad perspective, the anguish...yes, I claim them all! I think we've all felt like this; the thing we want more than anything, forever outside of our reach. I hope I've captured something of that feeling and also the physical sense of animate vs inanimate; here but not really; vital parts missing...I park my dark in these crosshatched shadows and laugh a lot in real life as a result. It keeps me on the straight and narrow (most of the time). Finding somewhere to keep your melancholy doesn't mean you have to hide it or hide from it. Throw it out there...it works. 

Hope you're happy too...

One from the archives...Since I'm drawing either very slowly or not at all at the moment I thought I'd share this little ballpoint drawing from a few years back. It was for a (now disbanded) local band that my brother drummed for called J.A.R.S (hence the jar) to promote an EP they made called (you guessed it) My Friend Hope. They were quite specific about what they wanted but luckily at the time I had a bit of a thing for drawing glass jars and bottles. I toyed with the idea of putting something in the jar, I can't remember now what sort of things passed through my thought clouds but in the end it seemed that the title suggested emptiness waiting to be filled so it was left as it was. The typography is a bit dodgy and the perspective isn't right but the lads were quite happy with it...it's all subjective isn't it? 

They're only echoes...

It feels like years since I started this (it's actually just a couple of weeks) and back then I had a reason for it, something definite had inspired the idea, it meant something. But it coincided with a bout of repetitive strain (I think, but it's in both hands so I'm not so sure) and then trapping my thumb in a collapsing washing maiden, which stopped all fine detail for a bit and made me forget the point.
So let me view it retrospectively and try and impart some meaning to the art...This is my hand, the one I draw with, so I suppose it's a kind of self portrait. I did post an earlier version on Instagram (@hollyholtart) with a description along those lines but I've refined it slightly since then and added some pencil (of all things), which I actually quite enjoyed as the delicacy of the drawing required something less...dense. This is one of those drawings that would have gone on forever so I just had to decide to stop. I'm even going to be so bold as to say I quite like this drawing. It's a description of the part of me that's close to nature, the part that likes to pick things up and explore them, the part that has to translate thoughts into pictures. The part that hides in a shell. Right, I've said too much, I'm outta here!

Hidden treasure...

Sometimes I just have to prove to myself that I still can. It felt good to do something observational, to think about negative space and form and light and shadow and really look at a thing rather than dreaming it up. To actually draw a thing that's there in front of me. So the victim of choice was these tiny bones and the weapon, biro. I've had the bones for ages, I found them and keep them in this little box like some kind of psycho killer. I'm not. I just love their bleached beauty and their reminder that everything is finite. We'll all be bones in a box one day I suppose. I wonder what people reading this think I'm like in real life...

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...

The keepers of our secrets...

Another little skull that kept pecking away at my own until I finally got round to drawing it. I love doing these strange little skeleton drawings every now and again. They aren't exactly what you'd call anatomically accurate but their tiny bones seem to exude personality more than flesh and feathers do. The intention was for the Blackbird to be contemplating his skeletal reflection but to me, the skeleton seems more taken aback by what it's seeing. Once I start these things, they really do take on a life of their own and the picture in my head is never quite the picture you see here, but think of that as an enhancement. I did have more ambitious plans for the design of the mirror but I really don't have the patience, I think you can have too much agonising detail in your life and smaller than life size bones in ballpoint pen is plenty for me, thanks. 

Out there in the deep...

A blue shark, in blue biro. That worked out quite nicely didn't it? I was asked to draw a shark and here he is. I don't really think he looks ferocious but I'm sure he's a swift and agile predator. 

I've recently decided that I don't draw in blue pen enough, it suits certain subjects perfectly and makes them glow with electricity (which is just what I look for in creatures of the deep). This is quite a simple sketch really but there's something about the bleak, stark page with the shark hovering there. Brings to mind The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. I like backgrounds, setting a scene, creating shadows...but sometimes, there doesn't need to be a narrative. And am I really going to argue with this guy? 

You're the bees knees but so am I...

This grew out of a little thought I had about bees that might make ink instead of honey. I managed to locate some honeycomb grid paper and although it's cheating a bit, I really liked the idea of leaving some of the grid undrawn to show off how the paper has created the hexagons of the inkycomb. It's darker than I intended really but the bee not leaping out off the paper at you straight away is quite nice I think...and I won't be spoiling it with colour this time. To be honest, I much prefer THIS little bee.

This is how it feels to be small...

This idea (or something like it) has been rattling around the inside of my skull like a beetle in a bottle for some time now. I like the idea of drawing collections; hundreds of the-same-but-different items like you'd find in a museum. In practice I probably don't have the attention span for it, although I do really love to draw insects over and over again. Natures sparkling gems that I'd like to train to stay still on the lapel of my jacket when I go out like a pet/jewellery combo...I digress, back to the drawing: as I said, the idea was a museum collection and I was going to house them in a case with labels but when it came down to it, I couldn't bear them to be locked up or worse...So mine are alive and free but they can't read so hopefully they've put themselves into the right order (the artist cannot be held responsible for discrepancies in the name tags). They're also happy to sit while you look at them, just don't stay too long they're ready for a tea break.

Just for fun I thought I'd colour them with acrylic ink, I'll leave this open to interpretation but I know what I think...

The sun that pins the branches to the sky...

Don't be fooled by the simplicity of this, it felt like it was never going to end. I seem to have developed a ridiculously time consuming (and wholly unnecessary) technique of cross-hatching in biro to create large areas of blackness, then finding it not quite black enough and going over it with a brush pen. I know what you're thinking, why not just go straight in with the brush pen? No. It just doesn't feel black enough. And anyway, it's all about process, not product. I like the painstaking method, it's immersive. 

This is an almost literal interpretation of a scene I saw back in February or maybe March when I turned out of my street and the Sun was red and huge, burning behind the leafless trees like they were about to catch on fire. It could actually be a blood moon too depending on how you want to view it but I thought it was time our local star got a tribute (in orange and magenta acrylic ink), one last image of winter as the planet tilts into spring.

I saw it written and I saw it say...

Two strange things just happened: The first: I'd forgotten how to use my scanner! And the second: I felt nervous about posting again. This is just a little sketch to help me get back into things (again...), although it started life as part of a larger drawing that I lost interest in part way through. But, as is often the case, I kind of still liked my little cosmonaut chilling against a Moon rock. It seemed a shame to just ditch her so I decided to post her as she is, unfinished lunar surface and all. Her pressure suit is coloured with orange ballpoint and I also like how it looks faded and dusty, like she's been waiting here for a long time...Apologies for the scrappiness, I'll try harder next time, which will be soon (I promise). 

Wash out the sand but never the sound...

In a further attempt to get back into drawing again, I started dotting this. Did it work? It's too early to say. I like the idea but I'm not sure on the style. It wasn't going to be dots and it wasn't going to be sepia but as I've said before, this stuff draws me just as much as I draw it and the dots and colour kind of emulates the grainy texture of sand and sea shells. I'm convinced that things like that creep in on a subconscious level because I only realised this when the drawing was half finished. I should probably keep that to myself and let folk think I know what I'm doing...

I did, however, intend this to be a sequel to the whale ribs in a way; another lonely seascape with an ambiguous natural form. I'm trying to create a juxtaposition between the feeling of awe at the delicate beauty of nature and the sense of unease at such a thing becoming imposing, menacing even (and that is a very pretentious sentence but I can't describe it in working class, "grim up north" terms, sorry.) Or is it just a normal shell and the child who ran off and left her bucket behind really, really tiny?