Leftovers.

. . . . right.

so where to begin. the start, i guess. dozens upon dozens of pieces to upload and post that tell some kind of a story of going through a dark period last october into november, drawings for the most part but which - i think - don't necessarily make for easy viewing.

someone you love deeply almost dying kind of has. . . an adverse reaction on your work. and work into that other things going on at the same time - they were some pretty dark times. 'pretty' pictures' are not made on darker days. . .

thus, we'll begin with some leftovers - some rescans, some unposted stuff, some from as early as last spring, a couple of others from early october. before, you could say. . . and again, some i like, some i'm posting because emma - the subject, as ever - likes them, and some are better than others. . .

a note - i work from my imagination. i don't use photographs, i don't draw from life. i used to do both, but, especially working from photographs for a few years led me to a place where i became VERY dependant upon reference material and when it came to drawing from the top of my head, once my favourite way to work, i became overly critical of everything i produced, and that. . . bled into my other work. the decision to NOT work from source material has pros and cons - sometimes for example, the likeness of a person is lost a little in favour of capturing more some essence of them. i couldn't say whether that's a pro or a con, it's just something that is. some of what i do comes off very stylised, some doesn't. my brain decides. it's. . . i think, as honest a way to draw, or paint as there is.

so. some of it is better than others. but even the weaker stuff has elements i like. as you'll see when everything 'kicks off' in the next entry, the aesthetic goal of everything looking 'right' sort of goes out of the window in favour of expressive, visceral purging. and it does very much become about imagination, and abandoning old, finnicky, realist habits. . .

these, meanwhile, mostly speak for themselves, though some liner notes might be helpful. i'll post those at the end.






































































































































































































'liner notes':

1- the 'very short-haired emma' drawing is an oldie. about a year ago she had her hair cut almost - but not quite - that short, something she immediately regretted and fortunately her hair grows almost freakishly fast, the progression of which can be seen over the course of the other drawings, although it's often hard to put older stuff in chronological order because i - to appease her unease over how short her hair was - more often than not drew her with LONGER hair. . .

2- the dark, inky 'sleeping emma' piece that follows is one of my favourite pieces from last year. acrylic/ink on board, this kind of thing i feel i'm 'in my element', it's messy and loose in places (okay, most of it) and then finnicky in others like the hair. i also really liked that wing / shadow because it could be either, but wouldn't have worked with the usual, standard owl's wing. and more on owls, later. . .

3- the single, colour piece is me messing around with watercolours, not especially liking it and then inking lines over the whole thing. and yes, i know her head is disproportionately large. her head isn't that big in real life, i promise. i should also point out that she doesn't wear that cardigan ALL the time. i'm just especially fond of it. . .

4- the three panel piece. this is from the 'book of emma' and dates back to about the same time as a similar, almost comic book page. i like this a lot, even though as emma pointed out before i was even finished drawing the thing, the third panel looks more like sarah from 'chuck', which we'd not long watched. that's the subconscious for you. some you win, some you lose. . .

5- ears. some of those are emma's, some of them are mine. and some of them are composites. i was clearly a bit OCD that particular day.

. . . and the last two were the last two done BEFORE everything went. . . dark. the humour and prettiness of these is all but missing from what follows.

so these were as good a place as any to begin all this again . . .