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...

Under a blue moon...

Last night was a blue moon, which despite a day of pretty grim weather, I managed to catch a glimpse of later in the evening. One thought led to another and before I know it, I'm making pictures of the moon again. This is a response to the previous drawing in a way, almost a dialogue with myself about day and night which is echoed in the technique. Here, I was removing lines rather than adding them, drawing out the image with masking fluid then peeling it away once the ink was added. Just a little experiment, but I like the immediacy of this style. Apart from waiting for the mask and ink to dry, producing this had a nice energy about it and some mesmerising patterns swirling in the ink and water. 

To me this feels like you're lying on the ground looking up through the branches, completely unintentional but that's the great thing about experimentation: the discovery of something unexpected. 

Masking fluid on application...spooky...

...and after it dried...

And check out the name of the ink! I'd never noticed that before...

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.

The dream again nobody understands...

This was intended as a sketch to plan out an idea, but I probably won't bother drawing it properly now, it kind of got on my nerves once I got started. I do quite like the neon exit sign though - I really thought I was on to something when I came up with that...

It was inspired by a recurring dream I started having about a year ago, although this image isn't so true to dream life..In the dream I'm in a building where every room looks identical and I can't find my way out. I come to a space where a Minotaur (of sorts) is standing behind a counter or service hatch and I tell him I can't find my way. He says nothing but points to a door and when I open it I'm outside. Then I wake up. My Minotaur isn't really like the one in the dream, whom I suspect may just be a bloke in a mask. The life of a skint artist, even my dreams are low budget. 

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? 

It comes back but it's never the same...

I've been having a really extreme bout of drawing block lately. I've got pictures in my head but I can't seem to send them down my arm and into a pen, the link appears to have been severed. There's a few different ways I usually respond to this depending on the level of meltdown. On this occasion, after starting and abandoning a couple of other things, I thought it best to just scribble it out, play with some textures and see what happened. So here we are...again.

As well as bones, extremes of light and dark have become a bit of a fascination of mine and trying to create illumination from a light source in ballpoint pen presents a nice way to scratch about in the shadows. I can't explain why my lightning bolts shine in different ways to each other and I can't explain why the sea is not as choppy as the weather suggests but it's nice to be back.