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...

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...

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. 

Because it's you that sets the test...

Some people certainly know how to set a challenge. A request which has evolved into this hybrid creature sprouting tree antlers and cradling the pale moon (which has proved to be a bit too pale and delicate to survive the scanning process, grrr). I've been told that February's full moon is known as a snow moon because it brings cold weather with it and lights up the snow. That thought must have crept in and germinated while this drawing was in progress, although it doesn't take much for me to crowbar the moon into a drawing (or conversation for that matter).

This drawing was meant to capture the essence of a challenge or demand for respect but I feel like I'm being given an almost accusatory stare by that dead but alive eye...I love how even though I make this stuff, it never truly feels like it's come from me...

Just gotta know if I'm wastin' my time...

This wasn't what I had planned today. This isn't even the skull I'm meant to be drawing at the moment. Ignore what they say about procrastination...white ink is the real thief of time. There I was wrapping a parcel when this little light bulb flashed on, a skull in white ink on that brown, scrappy paper. And then all other items on the agenda ceased to be. (Just to clarify, I didn't draw this on the parcel, that would be some freaky ebaying!)

I started off with just a skull shape brushed on in diluted ink, which looked quite ethereal and ghostly and sort of worked in it's own way. I suppose you want to see it now? Here you go:

Then I remembered a sepia coloured pen I never really got on with and thought "where are you, my old nemesis?" (Yes I do talk to inanimate objects, what of it?) Pen found and many dots later I had a little skull. I'm not sure on the perspective but I wanted to use the natural way the ink had settled as the cracks and fissures in the bone, maybe some shadow underneath would have helped to anchor it down...I quite like how the paper has wrinkled though. It gives it energy, it was done quickly and it's nice that that shows. It's not perfect and neither am I. 

PS, if you're a pen weirdo, here's the pens I used:

Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it...

Lately, when I don't know where to put myself, I've started to draw dead heads. I was getting to a point this week where my mind was going to explode if I didn't put pen to paper, so I channelled the energy into this cow skull. I like the contrast of my head being too full and this one being completely empty and yet it still feels like it's watching me, casting a critical eye. It brings to mind this story by Annie Proulx.

This is actually something that I never normally do...practice. A preliminary sketch for another skull drawing that I'm going to be starting soon (I hope). I just needed to make sure I could do it, an exercise in satisfying the curiosity. I'd usually just go for it and to hell with the consequences. I must be losing my edge...

The tranquility of solitude...

Another weird little creature that wouldn't leave me alone. It was just a matter of where to put her..so she ended up in an egg. I drew this really as a way of starting a new sketchbook. Most people who draw or write get intimidated from time to time by the dreaded blank page, especially the first page of a new sketchbook. I'm not usually big on sketchbooks, I give up as soon as a drawing isn't "perfect" and it becomes another place to jot down recipes and shopping lists, but this one has the purest, smooth, white paper (that's kind of a holy grail for me) so I dived in with this doodle. 

I thought about giving her furniture, a cup of tea perhaps, maybe a picture on her shell wall but as with this drawing, I quite like the emptiness. A cross section, slicing into someone's tranquil hideaway. As for what she's reading...who knows? Perhaps she's revisiting one of her old sketchbooks.

Where everything is possible and nothing is what it seems...

Focus your visuals...Look closer...Zoom in...Do you see it? I've always been intrigued by the sort of artwork and illustration that has hidden elements. Pictures within pictures and tiny details. They were always the illustrations I'd gaze at for hours as a child so I suppose they've worked their way to the surface. I'm quite pleased with how this has turned out, it went from one idea to the next and settled itself on a dragonfly with a body made from a variety of human skeleton parts. And I didn't even leave it neglected for months on end, this was done from start to finish over the weekend. I don't know why I keep torturing myself with drawing these tiny, delicate bones but I hope I'm getting better at it... 

Hit the bottom and escape...

"A mermaid has no tears, and so she suffers so much more..." 

This drawing makes me feel sad. I almost wish I hadn't done it. A captured, lonely thing. I drew the jar ages ago when I was into illustrating glass in a big way...er, yeah. Anyway, the jar sat empty in a sketchbook for a bit and the other day, while I was on the subject of skeletons, this idea of mermaid bones came to me. Are you picking up the vibe that I leave a lot of things with a "to be continued" tagline? 

It's not really turned out how I expected but I quite like it when that happens (which is pretty much every time) it's like these things draw me rather than the other way round. Strange creatures swimming around inside my head waiting to get out... 

Oh heaven knows we'll soon be dust....

I don't want to give too much away about this because it's not really my thing to share, I'm just the illustrator. So in the spirit of science and rational thinking, I'll just stick to the facts: This little skeleton ballerina is part of the dotty Moon drawing I did a few weeks ago. I had to put a bit of distance between me and that Moon, this happens quite a lot but it helps me to think about how to proceed. The end product is absolutely nothing like the original request. The idea was very specific and put me in mind of the art of Roger Dean, whose style is very surreal and sci-fi and one I would only be able to emulate poorly I think (plus, I don't paint, too much cleaning up). 

As I'm still at the stage of putting things out there quickly before I have chance to censor myself, I'm showing this bit off (because I like it) and I promise the full drawing will be coming soon to a screen near you... 

Carrying around an empty head...

Now, I'm not really the macabre type but when I came across the delicate, fragile treasure of a bird skull on the coast at Flookburgh I just had to bring it home. It's some kind of little wading bird, though there's so many that look identical to the untrained eye, I couldn't tell you what it is (any twitchers out there, answers on a postcard). I really didn't have any intention of drawing it but I never had any intention of drawing anything, I just don't know what else to do with my hands..

Once I started I got a bit carried away and drew it quite a lot of times, which is an incredibly rare occurrence for my non-existent attention span. These are my favourites, drawn in dots (which is a bit habit forming, consider that fair warning!) Some people refer to this technique as pointilism but strictly speaking, it's stippling, which sounds like a style of painting to me. Although it's pointilism that is actually a painting technique. Confused? Yeah, me too. I'm just going to call it drawing with millions of dots. Genius! Like magnified subatomic particles. Actually, nothing like that at all.

This one is my favourite, the underside. These drawings are quite a bit bigger than the real life skull, I can scarcely believe it once housed a miniature brain.