Self Portrait at 4am

Since the clocks changed this Autumn, I’ve been ignoring the rest of the world and living in my own time zone. Time for me is eternally “Summer”. So 4am is only getting up a little early for me.
 

I’m always at my best in the mornings. It’s the time to plug away at something before the necessities of the day intervene. So here I am at my peak. In the dead zone between night and day. In the dead zone between Christmas and New Year.  I did a rough pencil drawing in the morning of December 29th that I thought looked promising. Next day I did a brush and ink version based on that. I then prepared a block and traced the image on to the block and inked it. But I wasn’t happy with it so I wiped it off. Next morning I stood back in front of the mirror. And using the ghost of the ink and carbon as the structure, I looked into the mirror for the highest highlights and cut them into the block. Being early morning in winter, I am entirely artificially lit by the LED spotlights in the kitchen. It’s a stark look.
 

Pretty much all the work was done in the hours between 4am and 8am over those 3 days.
 

I felt I needed a self portrait to face 2021. Last year was a year of growth and development for me. At Rugby Open 2019 I felt I needed a “body of work”, and I arbitrarily decided that that meant I needed around 35 images to my name. That’s pretty much what I did during 2020, and I’m really happy with how they all went. Last January I did a little self portrait using nasty dried-out old lino. So this one asks, “After all that, where am I now?”

Year of the Ox/Europa and the Bull

I thought I’d get in early with a card to celebrate Chinese New Year 2021. I didn’t have any time to think about it last year.

The impending year is Year of the Ox, but I’ve stretched it to Europa and the Bull for the forthcoming arrival of Brexit, too. A kind of message to my friends in the EU saying, “don’t get carried away by the Bull.” I know what I mean, anyway.

The Davies Collection contains a woodcut print, Europa and the Bull by Gustav Heinrich Wolff. He used the black bull/white woman motif, but in that print Europa looks much more up for it than old Zeus. When I first thought of doing this, I’d got one of Albrecht Dürer’s Eves in mind, though she turned out to be more frontal than I wanted. So I plugged away trying to get the angle right, and the arm and hand, and the turn of the head. The bull/ox shaped up very quickly, and appeared almost fully formed at the start.

I’m really pleased with the composition. The circularity of the arm leading to the bull’s body, turned back up by the horns, through her body back to the arm. There’s a kind of Yin and Yang thing going on, too. And the horn pointing at her crotch says, “Danger!”

I think I shall print some cards like this, then remove the year for more general use….

Schrödinger’s Exhibition

Seeing that I now have a picture on the wall in an art gallery, but nobody’s allowed to see it, it is simultaneously Art and Not Art. I didn't think I did conceptual stuff...

More Nudity (Artist and Model II)

This is a kind of follow-up to the Artist and Model print. I decided to go back to where the road forked for me and followed the direction I thought I was going in before I went for the larger, more detailed picture.
 

I still have it in my mind to use it on some of the cloth bags – just have to cut the slogan. But I thought I’d make it of a size to fit on a 6” x 4” card. Covering as many bases a possible, as it were.
 

I wanted to handle the artist and model differently. Using the ground as the “flesh tone” for the artist, but then using the ink for the flesh of the model. It’s saying they have different roles here rather than them both being my “subject”. Also I’ve got some dark green bags as well as the whiteish ones, so I can print in white on the dark bag as well as black on the regular ones. This design I think should work reasonably well both ways.

Artist and Model

A glimpse into life at our house. It’s what you always suspected, isn’t it?

However. My wife would have me point out that:
a) she didn’t know I was drawing her and
b) she WAS NOT NAKED.

Well. Ingres’ advice to the young Degas was to draw “many lines. From memory and from nature.” So that’s what I did here. My wife is an incorrigible multitasker. So you often see her sitting in one of these awkward twisted poses so that she can instantly uncoil and attack some project she had left to one side a few minutes before. When I saw her sitting like that, I knew that this was what I was looking for. So I scribbled down a quick drawing. Naked. Because we’ve been together long enough that I know what that looks like. It’s in my head somewhere.

That was just one part of making this picture, so I thought I’d take some time here to walk you through the whole process.

Lockdown has brought some serious tidying and decluttering to our house. In the process we rediscovered a bundle of plain calico shopping bags. Ideal for printing something on, we thought. That’s where this started. I wanted something to convey the idea of “Art” to go on a bag. Something maybe quite logo-like. But as often happens with these things, it spiralled beyond its original motivation.

Here are the original ideas for composition. Dating from mid-October.

I felt the first was too horizontal, so I went for a more elevated viewpoint like you get sometimes in Schiele or Degas. At this stage I was thinking of using the wee figures for the composition and producing something fairly anonymous. But then I thought maybe I could try and make it into a self portrait. I’d got in my mind that painting by Kirchner where he’s stood in a garish dressing gown and the model is sat behind him in her underwear thinking, “Hey. I thought this was supposed to be a painting of me!” Anyway. I began thinking of putting myself in the picture as the artist.

These ideas had been swirling round in my head for maybe two or three weeks when I saw my wife sitting like that. This is the quick drawing I did.

Things then started to move quite quickly. I’ve only noticed this recently, but thinking back, its always been there, though maybe suppressed by the world of work. When the ideas begin to flow, I get quite fidgety. I pace up and down, fiddle with things, wave my arms around. It’s kinda like being possessed. Over the next couple days the drawings started coming fast.

Here are some early-morning drawings of my face and hand, and then my body in dressing gown as a nod to Kirchner.

Here are some drawings of the “hardware”. The Chair and Easel. It wasn’t the easel I originally had in mind, but it was in the house, so I didn’t have to go out in the cold and dark to get the big one.

I also began working up the drawing for the nude model. You will notice that I gave her two left feet in this drawing. People insist on moving about, especially if they don’t know you’re drawing them. Anyway. I fixed that before it was too late.

Also my wife’s hair is pretty distinctive. It’s still quite dark on top, but the underneath has gone quite grey. She often pushes her hair back behind her ear, revealing a shock of white at the side. This is my quick drawing trying to capture the shape of that.

It was then a case of bringing all these parts together. Scaling the different elements, cutting them up and reassembling them. Here’s the version I traced on to the block. It was only at this stage that I noticed I’d got the feet wrong, so I corrected that on the block.

I always had in my mind that mirror image you get as the final print. As this was me as the artist, I wanted to ensure I’d be right-handed in the final print. So I made sure I drew my right hand in the mirror, switching between posing and drawing. Hence it’s a pencil in my hand in that original drawing, not a brush. Compositionally, everything else followed from that hand.

I’m pleased with the result. It is quite tense and awkward. not an easy, relaxed picture. Kinda like the process of making it.

Rugby Open 2020 update

Delivered “Love in an Age of Pestilence: Minuet” to Rugby Art Gallery this morning. They are going to hang the exhibition and aim to open as soon as government restrictions are eased. I think 16th December is the soonest this could happen, so it’s fingers crossed all round. There will be web/social media stuff happening too, so I’ll flag that as and when I know anything.

Update on 19th December. Restrictios are still in place, so no "live" exhibition until the new year if at all, really. Hope there will be pictures and stuff so you don't have to just take my word for it.

Meditation: Tea Ceremony

I needed this. It’s to calm me down after all the lockdown nonsense that has been putting me on edge.

I try to be like the Turk in Candide and not enquire as to the goings-on in Constantinople. I try to cultivate my garden with my own hands. But people do pull my coat tails and bother me with news of which Mufti has been murdered this month.

So a cup of tea.

This meditation is close to A5 size rather than the usual square cards. Mainly to fit both hands in. And I also have some frames that this would fit.

I hadn’t realised how awkwardly I hold a spoon when I stir. So I had to record it. Maybe I’ll change now that I’m aware. Or maybe not. Such is the power that really looking gives you.

Accepted for Rugby Open 2020!

My print, “Love in an Age of Pestilence: Minuet” has been accepted for the Rugby Open exhibition. Further lockdowns notwithstanding, it should now open on 11th December and carry on to 23rd January. You can find the original post about this print here.

I quite like entering these competitive exhibitions. I find having a target to aim for concentrates the mind. Though I must admit I get quite antsy waiting for the decision.

I wanted to address the whole covid/lockdown/distance thing and felt that now was the time to do it. To put up or shut up, as it were. I do feel I’ve got it out of my system in this print and the other two that didn't get accepted (here and here). So I hope I can now focus on other things.

I’m glad the judges picked this one. It’s very much an antidote to my print “Purgatory” that got accepted for the Coventry Open in the immediately pre-covid era. Back then I seemed to tap into a level of social alienation that I have increasingly felt needs challenging.

Hell is not other people. No. Not even those people. We need to puncture our bubbles and dance with people who are not like us at all. This is how we grow. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Sursum Corda (Meditation 7)

Here is this year’s Christmas-card-cum-Jahresblatt. I had to think long and hard about it. What on earth can you do for a card at a time like this?

I remembered a postcard that HAP Grieshaber made at the end of 1947 and sent to his friends. I bid on one earlier this year, but didn’t get it. Anyway, “Sursum Corda” was the message he’d written on the reverse, “Lift up your hearts.” 

He had returned home to southern Germany after being a prisoner of war and then a forced labourer in the Belgian coal mines, just in time for the severe winter of 1946-7. It was one of those winters where huge numbers of animals died in the fields because the farmers couldn’t get to them with fodder.

“Sursum Corda” he wrote the next winter. It’s the message to send in dark times.

So here we are. A tiny light in the darkness. Lift up your hearts. There can and will be light. You just have to make it.

Inktober: Part 3

 

This is the final eleven.

21. Sleep. This owes a little to an Erich Heckel print I’ve got in my mind. But I used the girl action figure as model. Did a drawing. Decided to crop it and focus in closer. Then closer again. There is pencil under this one.

22. Chef. I worked in a kitchen once. Washing up. The chef was an enormously fat man who sat on a wheeled stool and scooted himself from stove to stove. Slight homage to him, here. Did a rough sketch elsewhere and then did this one straight to ink.

23. Rip. Almost a meditation. Maybe it will be. I never use a shredder. Once you know how the grain in the paper goes, you can tear it into quite thin strips. I did 2 drawings of my hands trying to do this. A right handed drawing of my left and a left handed drawing of the right. Then I selotaped them together. I used that as the basis for the under-pencilling here. Quite a roundabout process.

24. Dig. Y’dig? Whatever it is, this cat’s diggin’ it. Some groove goin’ down. Yeah. Did it all, man. Did it all.

25. Buddy. Our great-nephew has a plush dog he calls, “Buddy”. So that got me thinking a child’s special relationship with a doll. I’ve seen a number of “Kind mit Puppe” (they’re nearly always German) prints and paintings recently and been reflecting on how these pictures are a version of Madonna and Child. So this. Did a very rough sketch and similar pencil under the ink. I was tempted to leave it at the grey stage. Maybe I should have.

26. Hide. A kind of Self-Portrait as Claudius here. There were all kinds of things that could have been the subject for this one. Even thought of a cow hide on the ground. But the great tradition of not hiding very well won out. So the great Ur-hider himself. Did some sketches of me messing with a towel in the mirror, then straight to ink.

27. Music. Can’t really separate the music from the musician, I think. These are based on Bob Downes’ hands. He has long fingers. I did a quick scribble while watching a video of Bob playing. It was a bass flute, so I shortened it somewhat to get the hands in. But that’s what art does, doesn’t it?

28. Float. Lots of things this could have been. So a touch of gone fishing. Felt like that this morning. Put a sign up on my door. Just went for this one, no pencil.

29. Shoes. Now we’ve been here before. Went for the obvious here. Just took out a pair of my wife’s shoes and drew them. Some pencilling under the ink.

30. Ominous. The rain is coming and there’s no escaping it. Sometimes you get a glimpse of how big clouds are. Wanted to convey something of that. Not sure how successfully. Straight to ink with the picture in my head.

31. Crawl. Used the female action figure with a dusting of Egon Schiele I think. Did a number of preliminary drawings. Crawling is not something I’d tried to convey before. Maybe she’s looking for a contact lens. There is pencil under, as you might expect. 

I really quite enjoyed this month. A good excuse to do some drawing before breakfast. Maybe I'll do it again next year.

Love in an Age of Pestilence: Risk versus Reward

 

The final Rugby Open 2020 print. This is the second version of this one. In fact I went back to my original idea. The image had became more and more close-up. But it was just too… chaste, as my wife said. Also it seemed to have gotten a bit manga-ish to me.

Anyway. My original idea was Rodin so returned to that. I’ve taken some liberties with the design of Rodin’s sculpture. I didn’t want the great stone block his lovers are perched on. But by taking that away, I needed to make the pair more stable, mainly by altering how the man is sitting. Also it’s now a bit more comfortable for his (ahem) erection. And I’ve put his hand between her legs because, well he would, wouldn’t he?

This final one is all lino cut. I always bear in mind when I’m cutting lino that some of the gouge marks will show in the white areas. So I always try to cut in a direction that makes sense, so I can decide whether to keep them in the final print or not. When I began clearing the background, I started singing the Bruce Springsteen song, “Fire,” or rather the Pointer Sisters version. So I’m trying for a slightly flameish vignette here that nods to the wood grain in the other two.

With all our distancing and social policing, it’s easy to forget that in the end we will need to get close. Even to people we haven’t yet met. One day we will discard the masks and be human once more. Human in our best, most animal ways.

Love in an Age of Pestilence: Minuet

 

The second print for Rugby Open 2020. This one is obviously about social distance, and having to make that calculation. But unlike my pre-Covid print “Purgatory”, with its uncomfortable alienation, my protagonists here are aiming to close the gap. My wife suggested the footprint stickers you see in shops to make you queue at proper distances. And that put me in mind of the illustrations in ballroom dancing books.

I had called it Minuet even before it had really formed in my mind. I wanted some form of distant dancing, and the minuet with its arms-length figures seemed just right for our time. As the idea developed, it became a much more sexy dance, more tango-like, as they seek to close the social distance.

This one is a mix of wood and lino. I really liked the individual elements, but struggled with the composition. This is version 3 or 4, with different colours, distances between the protagonists, background shapes. But at last I’ve arrived at something with the right dynamic. I like the movement it gives them, especially her.

Anyway, the story continues.

Love in an Age of Pestilence: Barrier Methods

This is the first of three prints I’ve entered for Rugby Open 2020. The deadline was yesterday, so I’m posting them each here separately over the next couple of days.

The challenge has been how to talk about the world today without, on the one hand, being sentimental and mawkish, or on the other, browbeating the viewer. Or both. I hope I’m getting there with these prints.

I’ve done three images on the theme of “Love in an Age of Pestilence.” There is of course the danger that if the judges don’t like the idea, all three are out. But I really wanted to give these a go. I feel that two things will get us through this mess. Love and humour. So this is me shining my tiny light into the void. We shall see. We shall see.

This one is subtitled, “Barrier Methods.” It’s a kind of fugue on my Meditations prints, but bigger. I didn’t look at the Sistine Chapel fresco, because I wanted it to reflect my faulty memory. And my hands. Well, both are my left hand, wearing rubber gloves from under the sink. I knew it was God’s right hand and Adam’s left, but I wanted a degree of equality between the two. So two right hands. This is not God and Adam here. It’s Everywoman and Everyman.

I plumped for woodcut here to give the swirling effect of the world of bugs we live in. And I wanted the fight of cutting the hands. Symbolic of the act of reaching out. The wood is from an old packing case that was dumped on the drive. Giving these things a second life brings me joy.

Inktober: Part 2

 

Here comes the second batch.

11. Disgusting. One person’s disgusting is another’s mildly unpleasant… So more that lip-pursing, nose wrinkling thing than any object or event. I did a rough drawing elsewhere and went straight to ink here.

12. Slippery. Did some drawings of the wee figure to try and get the angle and action. Then straight to ink here.

13. Dune. There are dunes near where I grew up. They had engulfed and buried a thriving town in mediaeval times. Then the Americans camped there in WW2 and left various concrete structures behind to be undermined and filled with sand. Straight to ink here.

14. Armour. Thought of Renaissance armour for some reason. And decided to put a woman in it. Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Did a drawing elsewhere. Can’t remember if I did any under pencilling here. Probably a rough structure.

15. Outpost. Thought of Kasr Ibrim on the Nile, where Bosnians were sent to watch the edge of the Ottoman Empire. They were sent and forgotten about. Took up with local girls. Their descendants are still there and think themselves a cut above the other Nubians. Anyway. There you are, watching the people watching you. Pencil structure here.

16. Rocket. Stephenson’s of course. My vague memory of it. Emerging from clouds of smoke and steam. Pencil structure.

17. Storm. The coolest of the X-Men. Building up thin layers of ink in this one. Did a pencil drawing elsewhere, then some pencil structuring below the ink here

18. Trap. Pony and Trap. Excuse to try and draw a horse, really. Quick drawing elsewhere, some under pencil here and then ink.

19. Dizzy. Gillespie. The bent trumpet. The glasses. Those cheeks. The trumpet’s not right but there you go. 15 minutes is too long for one of these. Some pencil under drawing.

20. Coral. Joe Coral. I really didn’t want to draw the underwater gnarly things, so I’ve revisited the Fancy. This time more 20^th century. Quick pencil sketch under.

Inktober: Part 1

 My son mentioned this to me during September. He does manga-style drawings and thinking of giving this challenge a go. I said if I did it I’d do quick things with a sumi brush and indian ink. I then didn’t really give it another thought until October 1^st. I’ve only been sharing these with my son and not doing the social media thing, but I thought I’d put them here in 3 blocks of 10ish cuz you never know, one or two of them might turn into something one day. They are all in a little 13cm square sketchbook.

 

1. Fish. I did this one in a bit of a rush just to get something down. Otherwise I might not have started. We’d got one of these fish vase/pots in the garden and I’d got it in the shed to clean it up, so it was the handiest fish, really. I did some pencil under drawing on this one.

2. Wisp. Used some watered-down ink on this one, and then full-strength over. First picture that came into my mind. Woman with tightly pulled-back hair with that one wisp escaped. No under drawing here. Just went for it.

3. Bulky. Sumo of course. I did a rough drawing elsewhere and then did an ink version here.

4. Radio. Seemed an oddly old-fashioned subject. So I’m trying for a 1950s/1960s thing here. Maybe she’s looking sad because it’s a sad song, or she realises that she’s a nostalgic image of something that’s already past. I borrowed the drawing of her from one I did some years ago. I don’t thing I did under drawing here. I can’t remember. Can’t see any.

5. Blade. The sharpest blade in our house is the bread knife. This one involved lots of squinting in the mirror with the knife in my wrong (left) hand. Anyway, could be an idea for a meditation, maybe. Definite under-drawing on this one.

6. Rodent. My son did an art thing when he was 11 that involved drawing rats. It’s something that has stuck in our minds. We’ll always know how to draw a rat. This one is more Rat Couchant, rather than the Rat Rampant of my new year card. Sketch elsewhere and no under drawing.

7. Fancy. Fancy? My mind went to Hazlitt’s essay, “The Fight” in which he excitedly relates watching some bare-knuckle boxing. The Fancy. Used my little action figure here because he’s built like a boxer, though the guy in the picture turned out more … late career. Did a sketch elsewhere and no under drawing.

8. Teeth. My parents were of the generation where you had your teeth taken out as a 21^st birthday present. So these things were always knocking around the house when I was a kid. I must’ve been maybe 16 when I last looked at a set of dentures. My teeth are getting gappy enough to justify them for me soon, maybe. Some under drawing for this one.

9. Throw. Action figure again. I draft him in for the athletic stuff. No under drawing, painted from life, as it were.

10. Hope. That kind of light in the darkness thing. Whether it’s for a boat or a wayfarer, or whether its the people inside hoping that the wanderer returns, we’ll never know. Just went for this one. No under drawing.

 Anyway. More to follow in about 10 days.