Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, why drawing birds is like drawing people.

Summer is basically over guys.

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. 

So then I did some more magpies pieces

Ah, good old magpies. 

Also I drew some hypno barn owls. Because. 

 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. 

Karim

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. 

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not, and is a PRECIOUS privilege.

Hello friends,

there are a few things I want to blog. Being busy in the manner of bee this blogging episode of mine should be brief. But also given my propensity to a longer length of wind, no promises. 

Firstly, while it is still running (until the 30th of April) I wanted to share the drawings I did of the play Radioman at the Old Red Lion Theatre and a recommendation to catch the show while you can because I enjoyed it a lot. It's a marvel of sonic storytelling and magical realism, written and performed by Felix Trench with live soundscaping. In my drawing the man with the beard is doing the soundscaping. It's really very good. Go see it. 

I've been doing a multitude of fun things in recent months, including some NHS academic cartoons

Some wedding invites and romantic comic commissions.

I've also been having some collage fun, which I wanted to share with you.

A while ago I was sitting on the sofa assembling love zines, as is my wont. I was talking to my hugsband Alex, about how much I love collage and putting together the colours and patterns to make yummy compositions. He challenged me to do more collages that focused on this, WITHOUT WORDS. Which is a big deal because words are kind of my thing, collage wise. I have envelopes and folders and a big puzzle mat full of nice words and phrases I have collected and putting together sentences from found text is the foundation of a lot of my work. 

But I am up for a challenge so I gave it a go. I made some small collage compositions. I was not forbidden from using any of my other go to collage elements such as roses, googly eyes, or things cut out of old field guides. Oh god I love cutting things out of old field guides. Is there a name for that? Eiji Watanabe syndrome perhaps? Anyway here are some.

I managed to make 5 without words, one of which doesn't scan well because it has reflecty bits (technical term). The other 3 I had made just didn't seem to come together until I had added words. I TRIED. FOR AGES. Well, for a bit. They needed words. 

The second two quotes are both from the packaging that came with our Eve mattress. They have good branding. And good memory foam. This is not sponsored. And yes Mother one of the quotes is from Ursula LeGuin and that one has already sold but I'm happy to send you a print if you want one (she's my mum's favourite). 

I spent most of the Easter holidays doing some sloooow interior decoration and writing two big scary pitches, one of which I already know I didn't get. Fingers crossed for the other one. If not, it's all still good. It's a PRECIOUS privilege to be alive as Marcus Aurelius reminds us, To me he will always be the mouse daddy in Magnus Powermouse, but apparently he was also an Emperor. 

Quotes are good. I enjoy how much the internet is full of them. Although I think a lot of the graphical presentations of quotes are ugly. So we must all practice responsible typography. I'm working on a new typographical piece right now, see my instagram for sneaky work in progress. 

I have done a few more Real TV Wisdom pics since the new year too, quotationally. 

That's all the things I have to say for now. 

Except I might be getting a cat.

If I do. Expect a LOT of pictures. 

The Institute of Cool Stuff, or it must be Art, right?

Sometimes I argue myself round in circles about the meaning of Art. I recently gave a talk at a Symposium on Artist Identity at Birkbeck University, about how loaded the words we use to identify ourselves as Artists, Designers and Craftspeople are, and how the foundation for that is laid or disrupted in the art classroom.  and I was going to post the transcript here, but I'm not allowed because they are probably putting it in a magazine.
So today I wrote this instead. 

Editorial illustration for review of Pop Life exhibition at Tate Modern 2009 - Jenny Robins

I recently learned about The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites, it is quite old, but I learnt about it on a TED Radio Hour podcast that they re-issued this week from some years ago, you can see Thwaites' TED Talk here. 

It made me think about a conversation I had in 2005 with my then boyfriend, now hugsband. I know it was in 2005, because I had just come from seeing the Turner Prize exhibition where Simon Starling's transforming shed had won the traditionally controversial accolade. It was one of those conversations that stays with you forever and shapes and changes you a little bit but more becomes an echo in your brain that pings off when your thoughts take certain well worn paths. One of those soundbites that circles your consciousness. I'm sure you have some of those yourself, I don't know if he remembers it. But more of that later.

Thomas Thwaites decided to try and build a toaster from scratch. Actually from scratch as in mining and smelting his own iron ore to make the steel, apparently it was not an entire success. He couldn't do everything that needs to be done to make a toaster without a scientific lab or high tech factory floor to help him. But he got pretty close, and it cost him £8000 and a year. But then he sold it to an art museum for £20,000. So a profit of £12000 for his work, which is not bad really. This was mentioned in passing on the podcast, and my googling skills have not manage to turn up details of which art museum this was. This contextual titbit seems hidden from online accounts of the project, although I haven't read the book, so of course I don't know whether the toaster from scratch as art object is shown as an endpoint there. I have a feeling the book is more about the journey and the technological economic onion layers Thwaites' researches peel back.

The project raises all sorts of questions about the intense complexity of the web of international manufacture and processing needed to produce even the most seemingly basic of everyday objects. And of science and how remarkably far we've come in industrial processes that the majority of the human race has no more than a rudimentary understanding of. And how even if there was no-one in the world who knew how to make a toaster from scratch it would not stop toasters from being made, as long as someone somewhere is making each little component from materials created somewhere else from resources mined somewhere else by someone who knows how to be really good at that, or at least how to be really good at exploiting their workers. And how efficient the global tides of commodity need to be to make it possible to buy all of this technology and industry in the form of a toaster from Argos for £3.95. It's easy to forget how big the world is and the economies of scale necessary to make it feel as small as it does, but come the zombie apocalypse, we will probably all wish we had learnt how to make industrial grade electronic components. 

Of course. It's a brilliant project, that holds a mirror up to the world we live in and investigates it while telling us a story. 

It must be Art, right? 

Thwaites was a student at the Royal College of Art at the time of this project, and of course the toaster itself has now been legitimated as a piece of Art by its sale, embodying in its ugly melty self all of the big ideas and the labour intensive project. 

On his website Thwaites describes himself as "a designer (of a more speculative sort)." The Ted Radio Hour editors curated the Toaster Project into a category of inspirational stories about the pursuit of curiosity. I think there is a tendency today, to avoid defining these kind of imaginative and ambitious projects that the Ted Talks roster is full of with the capital A word. 

Which brings me back to Simon Starling. 

In 2005 Starling won the Turner Prize with Shedboatshed, a project in which he found an old shed he found on the banks of the Rhine, took it apart, used the pieces to make and fill a small boat, then used the boat to travel down river to Basel, Switzerland where he dismantled it and turned it back into the original shed inside the Museum there, and later in the Turner exhibit at Tate Modern. 

So I was doing a unit in Art History as part of my degree in Illustration at the time, and I went to the show and I made a powerpoint presentation about Simon Starling's shed. Sadly this slideshow seems to have been lost to posterity, but needless to say it was excellent and insightful and contained rotating shed graphics. 

In terms of successful craftsmanship this project might be seen as the antithesis of Thwaites' toaster. Although both draw our attention to the individual maker within a mass produced society, and the temporal nature of design.

Starling's shed MUST be Art though, right? It won the Turner Prize! 

So I was telling Alex about Shedboatshed. I remember exactly where we were, walking down Bedford Place in Southampton towards the centre of town. And he liked the idea of a shed becoming a boat and then becoming a shed again, but he was having trouble with said project being considered capital A Art. Just like the majority of the population, and probably more art students than would admit it to their tutors, that category was reserved primarily for objects made to be looked at, paintings mostly, for things that give you something aesthetic without having to know their history. The majority of classical and modern art in fact, whether figurative or abstract. I asked him whether he thought the project shouldn't have happened, and he said no, and he didn't think it shouldn't be exhibited either. But not in a gallery. There should be a place to show things like Shedboatshed without calling them Art. An Institute of Cool Stuff. 

The Institute of Cool Stuff has existed in my head ever since.

Imagine that you could show your work, or apply for funding for a project, simply on the basis that it is pretty cool. 

And the great thing is that today, you kind of can. The democratic nature of the internet rewards the pretty cool project with clicks, views and funding if the initial bridge of communication can be achieved. 

People have always made things without a good excuse. Which is to say, because they want to, because they are driven to, because they have ideas that they think are cool and want to see them happen in reality. 

Sometimes this gets called Art. Sometimes the makers get to a place where they self identify as Artists and even persuade the Art World to pay them lots of money for these projects.

We have to be realistic about that £8000 and a year of his life Thwaites was able to dedicate to his toaster, and that profit he was able to make. Most people are not in that position. The kind of Art that engages with the real flow of power and money in the world on it's own terms is a gross parody wrapped in a greedy realism. Starling had another work in that 2005 exhibition called One Ton II in which 5 platinum plate prints showed photographs of the South African mine from which one ton of ore had to be mined in order to produce the platinum used to make the prints. These works are subtle and reflective and hold dark mirrors up etc. etc. but really I think they are not much separate from Damien Hursts' diamond covered skull. 

Ordinary people, and I assert there is no such thing as an ordinary person but for the purposes of the argument, make cool stuff all the time. Anyone could make an ugly and non functioning sort of toaster from scratch, or take apart a shed and make it into a boat - well they would need to take some courses and do some research obviously, and they might need some help, but what it a project without research? What's the point in making if you're not learning? And most of those plucky creators wouldn't expect or receive the return on investment that Thwaites and Starling did, or that in the case of the diamond skull, Hurst tragicomically failed to receive. Making in the corners of our lives is cool too. It still takes courage. If doing a project takes you ten years because you have a day job and a mortgage and mouths to feed, that makes it more impressive in some ways. Whether you have the luck and the privilege to be able to dedicate your life to making, or whether you have the luck to have been born with the courage to dedicate a chunk of your life to making even without the chance to go to art school or to do internships or know the right people or any of that. Either way sometimes it pays off, and the unnamed art museum buys your toaster, and sometimes it doesn't. 

But as my friend Rebecca of The Pigeon's Nest points out about the people who look at her lovely crocheted products at craft fairs and say 'I could make that' - yes, but you DIDN'T! In other words, it's only by putting in the time and the balls and getting our hands dirty that we have created the new. The worthwhile. The cool. 

The Toaster would have a place in my Institute of Cool Stuff, along with Starling's shed. And so would crocheted bunny slippers. And lego sculptures, and Szopki and Baining masks and teddy bears dressed as popes. All of the peaks of human creativity and courage. 

But would it have painting and drawing in it? 

Now there's the real question. 

I mean yes, obviously it would.  

In drawing and making news, I made these last week. 

They are the actual migration routes of the birds, cool right? 

Two sold at the Blackhorse Workshop market, but two are available in my Etsy shop now. 

What Birds are REALLY Thinking...... 2!

Although I am trying to buy a flat in London with my husband and am therefore filled with a constant gut tearing terror and dispair, there are good and exciting things happening which are good and exciting. 

Mostly I am happy and excited that I have finished the second edition of What Birds Are Really Thinking. Here exclusively and for the first time I will show you some pictures. 

This has been in the pipeline for a while, moving between back and front burners to make way for aforementioned housing angst and other exciting projects such as those detailed in my last post.

The first edition of What Birds Are Really Thinking, including spoonbills thinking about Britney Spears and starlings thinking about soft furnishings is my all time bestselling thing that I have made (apart from the Magpies print). In addition to being one of the very first things I made after moving to London to seek my fortune as an illustrator back in 2008.

 And this edition is soooooooo much better.

 I decided to revisit the topic in 2015 as an excuse to make some multimedia work and draw birds (my favourite things) and as a promotional follow up to the launch of my new website (jennyrobins.com). Much as I have a fondness for the original zine, this second issue really does show how far I've come in terms of skill and design. I will be sending these out as a mailer in the next month with a few postcards I also have in the pipeworks. 

 If you fancy owning your own copy, they are available here, or pop me an email if you can think of a good reason why I should send you one for free.  

In other good news, the event June and I organised for the Big Draw back in October/November 2014 has won a runners up award in the Drawing Inspiration Awards. That's good eh? We are going to the awards ceremony and will probably wear nice dresses, definitely do some live drawing and possibly make a speech (appropriatness of speech not yet confirmed.) I've announced the news officially on the Storyhands site here. 

This is me taking a short break from running the Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt in my F(Art)S T-shirt. This is what it looks like to be AWARD WINNING. 

Goeiedag, Good News,

Hello hello hello, bonjour, guten tag and indeed goeiedag.

Reasons to be famous, completed projects and all sorts of illustrated high-jinks abound in this springtime season of newness and tidying.

A short while ago I made this first page of a comic about what Europe might be like in the future, and sent it along with a summary of the rest of the story to the nice people at Friedrich Naumann Stiftung for their Europe Fast Foward competition.

Along with six other comic artists I have been commissioned to complete the story and then go to Brussels for an awards ceremony and the launch of the book of our comics. Which is cool.

I'm not going to share the story with you, because I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise of what European culture will be like in the future. Because I am that prescient and clever that I have figured out what that will be. 

ALSO, I want to tell you that drawing lace is really enjoyable and I want more excuses to do so.  

In other comic news you can see a review of the second issue of Meanwhile... featuring my found text comic (Loved and Found, the serendipitous love story) on the Forbidden Planet blog here. Which is quite exciting. 

Also and as well, a somewhat longer time ago, the magnificent Christopher Kear of The New Tabloids commissioned me to produce some collagey artwork and designs for the album Good News including a full colour 12 page lyrics booklet in the found text style.

It is now a real thing in the real world and I went to the launch party although I think I missed my shout out which is a little bit embarrassing. 

The music sounded really good tho, you should check it out. 

Here are some of the lyric pages

I love the mix of serendipity and intention that is in all creativity but comes out especially much in abstract collage. The materials and colours that I used related to the theme and mood of each individual song, with a theme of using newsprint and jagged edges throughout, relating to the idea of the band's name and ethos of fractured journalism, commenting on modern life seen through the bottom of a broken bottle, dancing in the wreckage of the scene. You know, that sort of thing. Right? 

I've been doing lots of other fun drawings for fun and profit, much of which I am not sharing yet. But here are some sneaky, cheeky, peeky work in progress (or #wip to those in the know, or #itk) pictures from the new edition of What Birds are Really Thinking I am working on. 

It is going to be so so so good. Probably.