Drawing New Lines in the Sand

Sometimes I love to do really detailed work but I also love it when an art director is happy for me to go with a simple drawing as the solution. Looking from the objective outside I'm totally aware the idea/message the illustration is conveying is key and the length of time to produce it is irrelevant...but I do still have a small interior "voice" that sometimes says I should be working hard and long for my fee! It must be my Scottish work ethic :-)

Sketchbook - Before and After the Revolution

I refound this in an old sketchbook.  It shows the changing lives of two dogs before and after the Revolution!

First Ever Animation

I drew these doggies a couple of weeks ago. Dennis mapped it out for me and I was to draw over in my style. I don't know if I'd make a very good paint and trace person as I couldn't help making little changes....so any errors are mine and not Dennis's!

It was amazingly exciting to see my still drawings move - it really made me appreciate the thrill animators must feel.

Our Afternoon Visitor

Mr Foxy was curled up in our garden this afternoon! I called to him and asked him up for hot chocolate and toasted fruit bread but either he was ignoring us or very deaf. I'm hoping he was just feeling bold lying there and not poorly.

Below is an inky fox drawing I did last autumn.

The Cresswell Horsehead and where does our need to make marks come from?

A week Saturday I'd gone to Chichester without a sketchbook. On the train home I drew these on the back of a brown paper bag.

When I've imagined being imprisoned somewhere - like you do :-) - as well as the obvious fears - one thing that would concern me would be not having access to paper and pens.
I wish I knew more and understood more in an anthropological and psychological way about where this need to make marks comes from and why we as humans have it?

On the BBC documentary the "History of Ancient Britain" a couple of weeks ago they showed a beautiful drawing/engraving done 13,000 years ago of a horse's head scratched into a horse's bone. Here is a clip about the Cresswell Horsehead.

When I'm responding to a commission I'm conscious of and considering an end result. But there is something about the sometimes sudden need to draw that is so immediate and the act of making the marks is the total driving force. I feel a much closer connection to the Cresswell Horsehead artist than to all the more recent art historical periods in between him/her and me.

I see the British Museum are planning an exhibition "Creative Beginnings: European art in the Ice Age" from October 27 – February 2012.

Flower Wish List

Writing about bluebells reminded me about this drawing I did a few years ago for my boyfriend...not long before Valentine's Day - it makes me wonder just how control freaky I might actually be!

Bluebell Time

When it comes to flowers I know I'm fickle...in June my "all time favourite" will be floppy pink peonies and a couple of months ago my most loved flower was blue hycinths...but for May it's always bluebells.

A couple of years ago we had a picnic in this bluebell wood. Although there are many at the moment growing in clumps in the parks and gardens of London, I'm hoping we'll make it to the countryside in time to see a forest full!

Perfume Bottles

I've been collecting perfume bottles since I was six and last autumn I finally got my "London Collection" out of old shoe boxes and into a cabinet. I also have many in Scotland and when home last year I drew some and recently made these repeat patterns with them.

Maybe sometimes simple is best?

I did this sketch in the autumn in a beautiful B&B in Cambridgeshire when I attended an archive day at the Curwen Press. It was dusk, we'd just arrived and we were having a cup of tea before exploring the village of Linton.

Now I've spent an evening doing the colour version below ...I realise I actually have a fondness for it just as a blackline drawing straight from my sketchbook!

The Misbelief I don't have Time!

With commissioned work I seem to be able to work in any circumstance - on trains and planes, at other people's houses or surrounded by unpacked boxes as I've been doing the last six weeks. But I wanted to test my belief - that to do personal work I need at least half a day, a tidy desk and a clear mind.

So last night after sixteen hours in front of my computer - (I felt like I had saddle sores without the joy of leaving the house or being on a horse!) - I wanted to see how quickly it would take to create something with "no purpose" - just for the fun of drawing. It was about fifteen minutes! If only every piece could be this quick!

....There is a wonderful interview with the illustrator Jan Pienkowski on Desert Island Discs this week.

Sketches from Summers Past

I realised at the weekend that for the past three summers I've been on holiday abroad on this week of the year. This prompted me to get out my sketch books from these holidays - and have a mini 'memory holiday' at my desk! Below are some drawings from those trips.

2006: Ferry between Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonissos



An isolated rocky beach on Skopelos




2007 Sketches from the train window on The Golden Pass journey between Montreux and Zweisimmen. As the train climbed the mountain leaving Montreux a woman waved to us as she lay cosy under blankets on her patio. It gave me that lovely feeling children get when a train driver waves or toots his horn!



The cable car down from the Shilthorn and Piz Gloria (the lookout tower where James Bond stays in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"). It wasn't as exciting as his visit - I just drew, took some photographs, played with the snow that was still up in the mountains, watched a fox and had a hot chocolate in the revolving cafe.



Bears kept in a pit in Berne. This was incedibly distressing to see. I found it hard to believe animals were being kept this way in Switzerland in 2007. There was talk of rehoming them - it couldn't happen soon enough.



Lake Annecy in France



2008 A restaurant in the Tramuntana Mountains in Mallorca
It was set high up in the woods - an old farmhouse I think. It was an incredibly hot day and we swam in the swimming pool before lunch which had a waterfall flowing in to it - mountain water - it was freezing!