Before I go back to schooltimes this week, I wanted to share with you some birds and words and drawings. Some organic work feeding into work sort of stuff. In case you think I only draw comics and cookie cutters these days.
In the beginnings of the summer I did quite a few bird pieces some of which are still available on Artfinder and I took quite a lot of in progress pictures.
I had a magpies commission to do and it was a while since I had drawn any, so I did a practice piece of a magpie taking off to the left, which was a lot of fun. Tapping into this territory of planning combined with quick, fluid working is so good - each individual stage is quite loose and quick, but you have to wait for each one to dry so that the ink doesn't just bleed into the lighter areas completely out of control. Like watercolour, using ink is a lot about patience and a lot about balancing chance and control.
And then, because I had some photos of a swan that I took on a walk along the Regent's Canal, I did this swan piece which is still for sale.
One thing about drawing birds in sequence like this, (as well as the satisfyingly obtuse combination of regularity and irregularity that reminds us that though we live in a world of mass reproduction there is still infinite variety - yes I am good at arty bullsh*t thank you) is you can include some of the angles/poses of bird that don't really look like what the brain reads as a bird.
Confused? Let me explain. Drawing birds is a lot like drawing portraits. Because 90% of the time, the position a bird is in and the angle you can see it from, don't fit our mental template of bird. The mental template requires either a bird standing still on a branch/wire/post or swimming, with it's head up and in profile so you can see the beak, or a bird in flight with the wings flexed and visible.
This on it's own, would never be read as a swan
I mean what is that?
Some fluff? A carelessly ejected dollop of whipped cream? A shaggy baseball cap?
But in context with their 8 swans a swimming siblings, we can read it as a swan.
How is that like drawing portraits? Because despite living in the real world and looking at real people all the time, we still are slaves to photo and mirror faces when it comes to considering what those people actually look like.
When I teach portraiture I always make sure to emphasise how hard it is to break down our mental conditioning to read a face as a symbol. One of your very first jobs when you are born is to identify fellow humans, to find your tribe you are basically looking for a coordination of eyes and a mouth because that's about as far as your visual processing goes. Which is why we love emojis so much.
I mean probably, I'm not a scientician. But this makes people who are bad at drawing faces feel better.
Training yourself to process the visual information of the eyes being half way down the head not up at the top is the first step to de-emojifying your brain. You can do that drawing on the right side of the brain thing and make yourself forget it's a face you're drawing and just look at the shapes. Which is fine if you're drawing from a photo. But problematic if you're drawing a person in real life who moves a bit whatever their intentions.
Live drawing from July
I actually prefer to draw people from real life because of this.
The infinite tiny movements your face makes give a wealth more information than any photo could, and so many of us are in the habit of putting on that practised smile as soon as a camera points out way. A smile that's usually nothing like the smile we give when we're genuinely amused, or contented. Not like the bird posed on a wire or wings out and up for a fraction of a second. To capture a real likeness you have to see both - the photo face and the face behind it. The person behind it.
That's what I think anyway. I do also LOVE drawing faces straight from a photograph. It's not that I don't like that. With the facebook project I mostly have the advantage that I know the person in question in real life, so I can tell which of their facebook photos are good representations of their real life presence, and which are the ones that were chosen as a profile pic because they look more like what we wished we looked like. If I'm doing a portrait for a client I always ask if they can send me multiple photos as well as the one they want me to use as primary reference. So I can check the angle of the features as an average, and make sure I talk to the hind brain of the people that know the real life person I'm drawing.
With this little guy for example, I had to make sure I got his sleepy eyes and his chubby little neck.
Another recent commission for an editorial illustration in UCL Alumni magazine had me drawing a small brown child, but this time with lots of colourful reflecting water. It was for an article about how over protected today's children are.
One of the joys of art is such that what one draws/makes, one often wants to draw/make more of. Which is why life feeds into practice and practice evolves. So this commission in a way lead to the look of the swan piece, and to me choosing this photo to draw of Julita from her facebook albums.
I think I've got reflecty water out of my system now.
But we'll see.
Maybe I'll think of a way to get some into the comic.
In black and white too, what a delicious challenge.
The last few summers I've been doing this whole thing where I pretend to be self aware.
"Summer is stressful for me", I say to friends and colleagues who ask me what my plans are, "because I always want to do 3 things - have a good rest, get loooooaads of work done, and see all of the friends. I could probably do two out of the three, but I'm never going to do all three to my satisfaction."
And mostly this elicits the expression it deserves - shut up whiny teacher who has massive paid holiday at the time of the year when it's awesome. Or, from my teacher colleagues, shut up whiny part timer what do you even know about getting looooooaaads of work done.
My friends don't actually say these things to me. Except for the really good ones.
(the best friends are always the most verbally abusive)
So I have less than 2 weeks of holiday left, and a to do list with teeth, but I'm going to write a blog post today. Because that's probably a good idea for self aware people.
All of these typography drawings were done whilst supply teaching by the way. Not that supply is always boring enough that you sit there writing blah over and over for fun. Just that it sometimes is.
You may know I took the current two years off of regular self promotion, in order to spend more time working on my ongoing comic project. So in the last 11 months I have only been doing work from clients that get in touch with me. I was making a concerted effort with instagram for a while, but that has completely fallen off over the summer. I've still been tweeting fairly much and in the last month and a half I randomly revived the facebook project to do 5 portraits.
Which I just photoshopped together and realised they have a pretty similar colour palette.
I wonder if the pink and blue theme is a subconscious expression of any life decisions we're supposed to be making. (not whether to have a sex change guys, whether to procreate).
But social media is kind of a weird place now right? Because our news narrative has changed but for most of us our lives haven't really. How do mechanisms built for narcissisms function in such interesting times? Some days I don't have the energy to contemplate it. I have a feeling I might not be writing a year round up blog for 2017.
Do you think that we'll break faith with the online in our lifetimes? Find some way to decide whose word we can trust? Retreat back to the printed word?
Well luckily if we DO need to distribute our truths manually, the small press comics scene is thriving and ready to take on the mission.
Did you know that in addition to reviewing comics for the Quietus I now also review them for Broken Frontier? I am entirely open to you sending me your comic for free for me to (probably) review it.
Especially ones that are both good and not very long. And not too delicate to read in the bath.
I'm not going away away this summer, although we did got to Cologne for a family meet up which was lovely. Because we spent all our money on a big holiday at Easter that I really should have blogged about because I took a lot of good photos. Although this was definitely the best one.
If you don't post photos of your holiday. Did it actually happen?
Yes. Yes it did.
Since then I have become kind of obsessed with drawing tourists though. So in Cologne I mostly took more photos of people photographing stuff than of the stuff itself.
Is that creepy? I feel like it might be. A lot of the girls coming out of cookie cutter pictures come from photos of people I sneakily took in London. For some reason that feels way better to me than using photos found on the internet for pose or expression inspiration. It's like, I'm not stealing something that someone else made ever (even a random candid photo), but I am stealing tiny bits of strangers' souls. And tourist locations are THE easiest place to take photos of other people without them noticing. And I need a lot of people for my comic and they look better if I use reference, even if I change it a lot (which I mostly do).
These drawings of tourists taking photos of each other are NICE though, you have to admit it guys. It's a LOVING kind of creepy. Right?
Oh did you want to hear about how the comic is going? hmmmmm, nah I'm done with writing for today. I guess I could share a few sneaky pages that have already seen light of social media day.
Remember Jess?
Here are two pages that come from that.
This is the first time I'm even showing anyone these guys.
They are definitely going in the book (probably).
Go read that if you haven't already, because it also includes fun things I did in the first 4 and a bit months of the year. Including, but not limited to, puffins, getting trapped in a wobbly dolphin, googly eyes, good life advice and REVERSE BATMAN.
I ended that post with: What else happened in MAY 2016 to our intrepid heroine Jenny Robins? Some NICE things I hope?
I can now reveal that this was a joke. Because in May we went to Nice.
May you live in nice times
2016 really was very much the year of the mini-break for us, the brief sojourn. You know like when I definitely can't complain that I didn't go on a proper holiday all year because I went on so many small ones and that would make me sound like a dick.
Most of the time that we were there we made jokes about how NICE it was. That literally did not get old for me and I think if I lived there it probably would not.
Most especially we liked the cemeteries on top of the hill.
If you are going to the cost of azure I thoroughly recommend visiting them.
Here is Alex displaying the effortless chic of all residents and visitors to the coast of azure.
Here we are at a beach, It was hot but the sea was not hot. I went in the sea but I was a wus and I didn't stay in the sea long enough to acclimatise myself to the temperature which I've since dwelt on and this I believe is my biggest regret of 2016. Really, if I'd just stayed in another 5 minutes I could have had a proper nice swim.
I didn't even make the pun on purpose that time. That is what is so great about the nice pun. You make it by mistake all the time.
Also, it wouldn't have been a PROPER NICE swim, because this beach is in Antibes, not in Nice.
Also, we didn't see any puffins.
I drew this for awesome Lucy and Rory's wedding invitation:
You can see a blog about their brilliant wedding here on Down-to-earth Brides. It's worth having a look for Lucy's jumpsuit and cape alone.
In May I also officially became a godparent to Arthur.
Arthur is the one in the shorts. He's awesome.
Also we went to Fliss' wedding, the fabulous bride was able to take time out of her special day to salute the sun with Alex and this statue
I went to Comiket and saw nice comic book people like John and Paul and Anna and Kieron and Gareth (who I managed to thoroughly freak out) and Wallis (who gave me bad advice re: freaking Gareth out) and other people I am forgetting now. But also significantly I met Julia again (readers may recall I also met her in March) and handed over my then completed bundles of zines for her to sell through the awesome distro One Beat Zines, including the feminist poster I had designed especially for the occasion.
On the first of June I painted this winter portrait commission. Those patterns on the jumper were sooooo fun in that way that kind of pressures the edge of the brain because it's really hard.
Do you know what I mean?
I remember the first time I was aware of that feeling was at life drawing class when I was 17. Like you can feel the weight of the amount of visual data your brain is processing. It's super satisfying in a kind of cathartic way.
Might just be me.
Anyway I posted in progress photos of this painting they are here if you're interested.
With the power of clumsily erasing offending details in photoshop, printing the result out and painting back over the top, I then magically turned this into a a picture of them in their wedding outfits which was used on the programmes for the actual day.
Monsieur I have conjured you a pocket square. Presto.
They really like that photo.
Of course they were even more beautiful on the real day, about which more in July.
Also, with previously mentioned lovely best woman Bella, I was in charge of a joint staghen picnic event which had been cleverly scheduled just two days after the EU referendum. We were tempted to allocate a special Brexit corner where people could vent/crow but opted for a blanket ban on discussion of the topic. A few days later again I posted a blog post in which I said a few fence sitty and yet still I feel, poignant or at least slightly pointy things on such matters. It's the same blog post as the one about the poster, so if you clicked that one don't worry about clicking this one. IF you didn't, here's another chance!
I just re-read it and spotted a grammar error. Don't worry it's fixed now.
Anyway, here are some photos from the staghen which was a great and glorious success.
I find this photo a little bit TOO hilarious. Despite my zero f**ks appearance on the right there, I actually did try really hard at egg and spooning.
Since Bella was secretly pregnant at the time, I was drinking for two.
This is my beauuuuutiful sister and me on the bus between the park and the pub.
I made us hats. I made a lot of hats.
Here is a photo of Hazel and Tristan that I clumsily photoshopped into McDonald's for jokes.
Like, it's funny if you know them. Probably.
That same blog post where I said pointy fence sitty things and wrote about the poster is also where I launched the new project, which was drawing lady folk coming out of cookie cutter shapes, and is still functioning under the title of the 3.52 Billion project. Although I would like to think of a new name. Or at least, I stated a vague intention to do so. I more officially launched it in August.
So I guess more about that in August, and I'll just carry on sprinkling them into the text whenever I fancy till then.
In the real world of the present this week (which is to say the past by the time you read this, of mid January 2017) I am channelling Almas quite a lot, having both finished my tax return and drawn portraits at a queer performance art night. I encourage you too to embrace your inner Almas.
Would I July to you?
So pretty much the first thing that happened in July, a week before I broke up from my teachy dayjob for the summer, was the actual wedding of Hazel.
Obvs all of the stationary and signage was on point
I was chief bridesmatron, here is a really excellent photo of my extended family making funny faces.
And an excellent one of just me and my parents looking very joyful.
This one is pretty great even though I am not even in it.
Also (because although this was obviously not MY day, this is MY blog) on the topic of me, I gave a really excellent speech. As well as being all touching and personal and shiz, it had a whole paragraph of alcohol puns in it, which I will share here because it doesn't have any mushy stuff in it:
Hazel and Tristan have chosen to celebrate their wedding in a place that symbolises what is most important to both of them; Alcohol. It’s good to see them giving love a shot, it may seem a little whisky, but if their relationship is ever on the rocks, I hope they can keep their spirits up, and when they’re apart, absinth will make their hearts grow fonder, until they cognac together again.
It was a really lovely day.
But it was only the beginning of my dress wearing and three course meal consuming summer, as during July we also attended two further weddings.
And I'm not saying Hazel's wasn't the most important (double negative, can't nothing please me) but her's didn't include an adventure of going to a place other than the one I grew up in. #justsaying
So one week after the family wedding, we were off up to Yorkshire (EAST Yorkshire) to attend another happiest day, that of our friends Dom and Paula.
I was so organised I made the card before we even left and so was able to scan it.
Now, I want to stress clearly that I was very happy with how things went down. but there was one tiny detail that I was not entirely happy about.
We were on our way to Yorkshire on an evening only invite. And I had no beef with that. I had a plan, to go see puffins on the cliffs during the day, and come to the dancing at the wedding in the evening. We had done the best thing ever to do for friends weddings that are far away, which is rent a big house near the venue with 10 other friends. And of those friends there were 6 of us in on the puffin plan. But on our way to Yorkshire we got a message offering us a bumped up position as day guests. This is the second time this has happened to us btw, we are a very first reserves kinda couple. So obviously we were like yes please to singing in a church and eating a tasty sit down breakfast. And it was a lovely wedding of lovely people with pinwheels and the sea and a good joke about black holes and bubbles. But on this occasion.
No Puffins.
See look how pleased we look to be in the church.
No beef
But no puffins guys.
Also, I really like Yorkshire and now I had been there 2 times ever and Andrew drove us through all of it and we saw lots of power stations.
Also in July I drew some cool commissions like this one of Adam and Emma
Which was for an anniversary, but still obviously, basically a wedding portrait.
And this one of Michelle and Sean
Who have since gotten engaged. So like, no theme here guys.
It was the year of LOVE. In my diary anyway.
Back on a more usual theme, I got some bird prints into GingerWhite gallery in Bethnal Green in July also.
And after drawing a few more Real TV Wisdom pictures, I finally had enough to bring out the second edition of the zine of the same name.
I went to another Broken Frontier Drink and Draw and drew this dystopian coffee shop.
At some point in July I drew this:
based on a true story, of course.
Then it was time to go on another adventure to Ireland for the wedding of my amazing cousin Jay.
She's the one in the white dress, it was 1920s themed so we all got dressed up and stuff.
We used to hang out the four of us here when we were kids and stuff and we were super cool cousins.
Here is an action shot of my parents dancing to the Irish band.
We went for some additional adventures in county Limerick and Clare before the wedding and then in Dublin afterwards. This was my first time in Ireland so that was super awesome.
Me and Alex and Hazel and Tristan reflected multiple times in a sculpture thing in Dublin.
Cool spooky church we stopped and explored.
Also we went to the cliffs of Moher.
There are meant to be puffins at the cliffs of Moher.
We didn't see any.
It was pretty tho.
I have quite a lot more puffin drawings in my backlog I can do that to btw. But on most days I accept it's not a thing to not see a puffin. Though I would be into it if one just came at me one grey London afternoon. You know like how in post apocalyptic films the animals have always escaped from the zoo so there's just giraffe's chillin in the park? Not that puffins would survive an apocalypse. They are evolutionary culs de sacs for sure.
That's part of why they are so great.
August is the proper summer
So come August I was into the proper summer. Which is to say, there were no weddings in my diary (until September anyway). I didn't have to go to school 3 days a week like I do most of the time (love my day job btw) and I could get down to some serious drawing and stuff.
I had a plan, and I had already put some of it into motion.
So this is kind of awkward to talk about, but I actually find school holidays kind of stressful.
I'm always trying to balance the three aims of resting, seeing friends and also getting lots of work done. Because I rely on my freelance work to fund anything outside of mortgage, food and bills I also feel under pressure to make the good money while I have the more time on my hands, which often leads to me spending more time scheming and cold calling than actually making anything (such is the freelancer life). But hanging out with so many comic book people was starting to rub off on me and I'd been feeling like I needed to put some serious time in to my personal work. So I came up with the plan. Which is this: In term time, I would start doing supply teaching work on the days when I didn't have a paying illustration client, starting in September 2016. In July I had done the getting the agency teacher job part and I was set to go for this. Now because I knew that I had that extra money coming in in September, I could spend August doing my own work without feeling guilty that I wasn't pitching or stalking art directors. I have a network to the extent that work trickles in, sometimes the flow is light and sometimes it's heavy, if you pardon the period parlance. But I had basically given myself permission to not worry about it. Which is pretty great.
And I had bought myself August to do things like do some work on my Etsy shop after attending a really cool speed dating style shop critique session run by London Local Team.
Also excitingly I got around to something I've been meaning to do for ages, which was to set up and film all of my personal sketchbooks from since I started having one, which was like, in 2001. So a LOT of random stuff that I drew/collaged/painted in my spare time in the intervening years.
You can read more about this in the spiel I wrote on youtube here.
You can pause it to look at individual pages, but I feel obligated to warn you that in the early 00s I drew a lot of boobs. There's some pretty embarrassing stuff in there tbh.
This is the classy professional setup I made to film them:
Bunny was executive producer.
There are a lot of pages though that I still love a lot.
That's a lot of years of making pictures, and when I'm stuck for inspiration, they're almost as reliable as Pinterest when I look back through them.
This is Julian. I really love drawing pinstripes by the way.
But mainly what I was doing in August was putting in time on working on a plan and starting to put that plan into action for me making a book. A big part of that plan is the (name still under discussion) 3.52billion project. I spent a lot of July and August drawing these ladies. As of the time of writing (now slightly later in mid January 2017) I have done almost 50 of them. For most of August I was posting them DAILY guys, on the gram of insta, I slowed that down to 3 a week once I went back to work and now they are as and when.
They are basically really fun to draw and caption. I could do a book just of these pretty easily, but because I am a) a masochist b) creatively ambitious c) obsessed with doing a comic d) interested in telling deeper stories than can be told in a glib one liner e) still figuring out ways I can do this project and somehow not look like an arrogant white feminist because that's what my internet bubble tells me to worry about f) all of the above, obviously, I am going to use them as part of a bigger book project that will include comics and stories. I estimate this will take me about 2 years to complete if I am able to be strict enough with myself with my time allocation and not get tempted into little side projects and low paying commissions that sound fun.
Which sounds pretty unlikely, so maybe 3 years is a safer bet.
There's still more stuff that I did in August, but I feel like this has got super long and super late already. So I'm going to continue that in the next instalment.
What to expect:
books, hats, blogs, more wedding stuff, more Yorkshire misadventures, and the most exciting new addition to our small family.
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