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...

The new black...

I've recently made a life changing discovery in the form a new type of black "material" (I think it's paint but I'm not entirely sure) called, well, Black. You may or may not be aware of an ongoing feud between artists Stuart Semple and Anish Kapoor. Anish developed Vantablack, the blackest pigment known to earth aside from the space between stars, Stuart thinks Anish ought to share it and to cut a long story short, ended up inventing his own. Which is incredibly black and has just about saved my hands and my sanity! You can read about the full extent of this madness HERE. 

This little experimental sketch is made using version 2.0 but I also upgraded some of the black skies in my older drawings using the beta version (you can see some of those HERE along with some of the other stuff I've been up to lately). The space between stars coloured with the colour of the space between stars... #sharetheblack

Sentinel 2017, ballpoint pen, acrylic ink and Black v2.0 on paper

Naming, shaming and reclaiming...

This drawing was torturous. It's nothing like I'd hoped it would be. You win some, you lose some. In it's favour, it's made me think about perhaps needing to give things proper names. When I entered my drawings into a gallery exhibition recently, they needed names and it did my head in thinking of them. Art shouldn't need words, that's the whole point! And yet here I am writing about it, don't ever accuse me of being consistent. So, in spite of myself and after reading some Greek mythology as research for my next drawing, I call this "Thanatos," god of natural, gentle and non-violent death. Which is what this drawing was meant to express; being slowly reclaimed by the earth, still beautiful, just in a different way. I like it better already...

Thanatos 2017, black and violet ballpoint pen on paper

My silhouette is stationary...

I was looking forward to a weekend of vegetation. The plan was to get home on Friday and turn into furniture until Monday morning. But I woke up yesterday fizzing with energy, I couldn't keep still and the intense, delicate drawing that's consumed my January so far was definitely not the place to channel it. I needed to chuck ink about with no consideration for the end product (or the upholstery). I've used this technique before and I'm not going to say it works marvellously or that I love it, but it satisfies a need every now and again. I paint the shadows with masking fluid; ink in the whites then remove the masking. So here's my favourite from the cutting room floor, an experimental spaceboy. I've added a bit of black and white pen here and there this morning because I just cant leave things alone. I'm throwing him out there, because you don't know what you've got till someone tells you...

So it started there...

I've recently had these two drawings in a local open exhibition. It's the first time I've ever put anything on display in public (or at home for that matter, although I know there a few "private collections" in existence) but I thought it was about time I stopped being such a massive weirdo about it. I'm painfully shy when it comes to my art and I get in such a state when I'm about to show a drawing to someone, especially if they've asked for it. Which is why I never mentioned that I was showing anything until now...the exhibition ended an hour ago...sorry! One day I might do something normal. 

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.