Sunday 8 July 2012

Quick-Fire Drawings

Now that I've got my scanned and laptop to finally start talking to each other I've been catching up with my backlog of unscanned drawings and posting some of them up on my Pictify page and on my Oodles of Doodles blog.


Most of the drawings that I've been uploading are from my quick-fire sketchbooks where I use a mixture of brush pens, permanent markers and Pilot Precise pens and try to make as many drawings as I can, in as short a time as possible. Some drawings can take a couple of seconds to execute while others might draw me in for a bit longer (like Grandad Skull above).


I do these quick-fire drawing exercises to free up the creative flow and have a bit of fun but it's surprising what can come out of them, especially when you are not concentrating too hard on what you are actually doing. Some of my most enjoyable scrawlings have come about through my recent practice of drawing whilst looking away from the page, as in the case of this Wonky Batman sketch.


There's something quite liberating about the lack of control and the freedom of line. It's something that would be quite difficult to consciously replicate if drawn in the usual manner.


And some of these quick-fire, look-away drawings I'll revisit with a grey brush pen, to add a little shading - which I also try to keep suitably scribbly.

Monday 2 July 2012

VAMALGAM 5 (V&A Staff Show)

After a 3 year break the fifth incarnation of the Victoria and Albert Museum's, not so annual, staff show is finally here. With 79 entries, 'VAMALGAM 5' features more work by the museum's very talented staff than in any previous year. And I must say that the standard is even better than I remember from any of our previous shows.

Unfortunately the exhibition is in a part of the museum that is only accessible to V&A employees but hopefully next year's show will relocate to a part of the building where it can be seen by everyone.


In the upper right-hand quarter of the photo you can see my entry, 'Swirly Skulls on Pink'. This print had been my favourite out of my two versions of my Swirly Skulls prints but since I recently had them both framed I'm not so sure. Maybe I now prefer the simpler black on white version. It's interesting the difference a frame makes to a picture.

Oh, and yes, the guy on the right hand side of the photo isn't standing on a box - he really is that tall.