Doodle Update

Please feel free to check out the latest editions to my new series of quick-fire drawings. I’m not sure if it’s an addiction or just a late-night ritual but lately I feel the need to draw before I go to sleep – even when I’m really tired (which obviously shows in some of the doodles). I’m continually updating the site with new sketches but as it takes much longer to scan the buggers than it does to actually draw them, there tends to be a bit of a backlog of images waiting to be uploaded.

Orifice Boxes - New Work

I’ve just started working on a new series of sculptures that I’m hoping will be ready in time for a group show that I and fellow RBS sculptor, Alice Cunningham, are looking to organise later this year in Shoreditch, London. The exhibition is to be an all sculpture event; however, I think it might be nice to have some examples of working drawings on display too. Although it’s early days yet and we haven’t decided on how many artists to include in the show, I have already invited a very talented artist, Gary Martin, who has accepted.
Anyway - back to my new series of sculptures. Basically, I was itching to make something so I started trawling through my pile of old sketchbooks looking for any unrealised projects that I could bring to life, when I came across the above sketch. It is a drawing that I made a few years ago that was inspired by my earlier wall-mounted Orifice sculpture but which was describing an idea for a box sculpture on wheels (no surprise there then). The initial idea was for the box to be cobbled together from a mixture of different bits of wood and odds and ends in a Frankenstein’s monster kinda way. From the photos above, you can see the early stages of the new piece (from the orifice carved from a block of wood, to the completed front panel). As is often the case, it was the production of the work that triggered ideas for spin-off pieces or pieces that would work as a series. In this family group each of the sculptures, while being of varying sizes and dimensions, will have a carved orifice or portal and have something at its centre. This first one is to have a nail-encrusted inner box, not too dissimilar to my previous piece, Nail Box.

Oodles of Doodles

I’ve just started a series of quick-fire drawings. The initial idea was just to try and draw as fast as I could (without thinking more than a split second ahead) and see what would happen. Most of the doodles are of heads because it just seems to require less concentration to draw a face (something everyone is familiar with) than anything else. And with each of these sketches I’d always start the same way – by drawing an eye as fast as I could, then just seeing where that led. I always find it hard to judge time very accurately when I’m drawing but at each sitting of probably not much more than 20 minutes I’d knock out 10 to 15 of these speed doodles. Although it can be easy to get side-tacked and accidentally start concentrating on what you’re doing – in which case, the drawing looses its fluidity and starts to become a conventional sketch again.
I don’t know if it properly qualifies as automatic drawing but it is fun to step away from the usual high concentration drawing approach for a short while and try something a bit fast and furious. With this method accuracy may go out of the window but you can end up with something quite free or surprising. Some of these pieces work and some of them obviously don't - but either way it is fun to break with the normal practice for a while and see if anything new emerges.