Opopanax, 1.

. . . and so, we begin.

i'll scatter these black and white drawings between two posts. possibly three. they're by no means ALL of what was produced, more a summary, sometimes randomly selected from piles of what amounts to very similar images. . .

obviously these are difficult to verbally summarise in any way other than describing them as being produced very physically, sometimes frenziedly. you can kind of read my moods and different points of the great low i was falling into by how linear or non-linear the images get, the line quality, so on. . .

they're not aesthetically very nice to look at, and they may technically be all over the place but they. . . well, they performed a necessary buffer. an outlet. and certainly they could be called personal. though hoinestly, i'm posting them as much to put that whole era behind me as anything else. what evolves out of this visceral near-ugliness is, toi me, better than what existed before it, artistically. . .

anyway. this bunch do fall into categories though. i think maybe more of a directors commentary is needed this time around than liner notes. . .



1-4.

. . . if something bad's starting to go down, and you feel helpless or worried it's supposedly helpful to distract yourself. these were drawn during an afternoon where my mother's condition, thought initially to be a bad dose of food poisoning got worse. and worse. and worse, until she was ambulanced into hospital, completely delirious.

attempting to distract myself, i drew. the first two drawings you can see a jump in style - my mood shifted down a notch. i attempted to focus more, rather than drawing randomly - i had an idea for a painting i wanted to do and the composition was in my head but i couldn't quite get it onto paper on top of being in a self-critical mood and my state of mind got increasingly mroe anxious, which. . . i think shows. there were more drawings, now long destroyed, that were along the same lines so to speak. the same old same old. but it was an afternoon of nothing coming out looking 'right', something that was about to be pretty much abandoned. the painting i was struggling to lay down a composition for, incidentally, i'll post two or three entries down the line - it got there, eventually.













































5-7.

three remnants of the next couple of days attempts to draw, which mostly ended up scrunched balls of paper strewn from one end of the floor to another and produced during a couple of completely sleepless nights. my mother's condition worsened., the words swine flu were thrown into the mix. her delerium got worse.

in the case of #5, i had almost, almost managed to calm my anxiety stricken brain enough to distraction and produce a drawing - in the thinner pen - that looked good, and then it went wrong. i think i screwed up the mouth, something i'm prone to doing - and pretty much ATTACKED the paper with a black sharpie. 6 and 7 could be said to have been done in the same manner, as were others, which i won't post because. . . well, you get the idea. and these are more linear examples.






































8-9.

more 'remnants', survivors of paper-massacres that didn't end up scrunched up on the floor. as things remained grim, i carried on trying not so much to take myself out of the situation as to find an outlet that wasn't, well, jumping out of the window. and while i continued with the scratchy sharpie and sometimes liquid ink, and usually destroyed the fruits of my labours, i began to loosen up the 'attacking the paper' a little. not a lot, but a little. these are sort of significant in that they're the beginnings of something that develops later on, just as 3 & 4 led to a finished piece of work, these planted a seed or two. . .

























10 & 11.

again, remnants, one marginally less loose than the other more. i did loads of these, and just picked two at random from the pile.


























12 - 15.

these, i don't even remember doing, and again they're very stark but some of the imagery, again, will be repeated later on in a more conscious manner. these also mark the first utterly random appearance of the very odd, thus far unnamed pajama wearing skeleton. make of him what you will. . .














































16 & 17.

these are random survivors of a drawing session done late into that first week my mother was in hospital, the remainders of which could be said to be a bit more like #10 and #11, but these stand out from this particular bunch. i should also note that all of these drawings are AS they appear on the paper, compositionally speaking. i think i had sort of. . . stoppsed caring about whether pieces of what i was drawing got chopped off by the edges of teh paper by this point. in fact i was just putting pen to paper and drawing with very little thought beforehand, a rather new concept given my habit of sitting staring at blank paper / canvas for minutes at a time before producing a single mark. some part of HOW i had worked to this point was no longer working. . .



























18.













and finally for this batch, further development of what i first scrawled in #8 and #9 with that mishapen and messy, vaguely birdish mask starting to become somthing very specific, the heart-shaped face of an owl.

and again, this goes soemwhere in time. . .

by this point, a lot of tension had been eased, things were begionning to still, and i think the more controlled - though still loose by my usual standards - line kind of expresses that. . .

anyway. further down the iceberg's tip next time. . .

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 . . .

New Work.

. . . . This week.

This poor blog is rather abandoned, which I ought to do something about - In fact that was a resolution of mine at New Year, and here I am five or six weeks later writing something for the first time since frakking November.

Some of it is simply forgetting I have an audience besides Model / Subject / Muse / Sidekick (etc) Emma - and some of it is weird Social Anxiety stuff I should be over by now. Something like Artistic 'Stage Fright' I guess, being overly self-critical sometimes, and other times just obsessing about the personal nature of a lot of what I do. In one sense most of these images are very simple, but there definitely feeling and a certain amount of emotion involved in them.

Also, simply, I'll be the first to admit that my work is predictable. You pretty much know what's coming next and whether rightly or wrongly I make my mind up that nobody REALLY needs to see ANOTHER Emma painting, or drawing, in spite of the fact that a certain evolution has taken place with both since I first painted her, a year and a half ago.

And not just in having gotten more used to the subject, it's. . . more than that.

I mean you'll see what I mean, but. . . Honestly, I feel like my work is evolving very subtly into something with more aesthetic substance.

And it's far too easy to keep it all to myself for whatever, reason, so. . .

Watch this space.

random.

saturday is the day for random drawings from what amounts to a sizeable backlog pile. all pencil, different dates, different levels of completion and quality and some i'm happier with than others, but. . .

happiness

happiness. exactly as the title suggests. one of my favourite emma drawings, so far. some artistic license used in giving her longer hair, but. . . i like it.

another very straightforward drawing from the book of emma. . .

"Sunday"

... and so we begin, again.

more to come. . .

reboot:

almost three months later. . . ?

sometimes we do drop off the face of the earth for a bit, inexplicably or otherwise. it's been three months of ups and downs and comings and goings.

new work soon. ish.

honest.

Emma That Was.

Righto,

This one's a bit different and is one of the oil pieces I've been working on. It depicts - as the title suggests - Emma, circa 2002 when I first met her - long, thick hair, nose stud, eyeliner and a little rounder in the face.

I've given her the same blue cardigan and turquoise shirt because I think they look great with the slightly stylised fleshtones i tend to use, and the brushwork in this is a bit more my usual fare rather than very smooth like in 'Emma #3'

Is it finished? Probably not. Am I done with it for now? Yes. I really liek it in this state, to be honest. Sometimes I have this awful habit of overworking things - I get to a point where a painting looks great, and I keep on going with it and absolutely ruin it and there is definitely a point where you should say 'this looks good' and put your brushes down. . .

This looks good.

*puts brushes down*

Two Colour 'Studies'

I'm not sure how to classify this pair - they were both done in much the same vein as the black and white pieces - scrap pieces of cardboard, A4-ish, acrylic over initial pencil sketches and quite stylised, but rather than work over the usual white gesso base, i used a flat block of colour, one orange one a pale blue colour and THEN drew, THEN painted. . .

The results are maybe a little more finished looking to some degree than the other small pieces I've been doing, particularly the rather warm looking orange piece which features the return of Emm's oversized wool cardigan complete with 'Watchmen' badge. the original orange basecoat can be seen in the 'halo' and behind much of the other details.

The blue piece, which looks by comparison rather cold is completely different. It's less stylised and probably the closest to realism I've come in any of these Emma pieces so far - So the two combined kind of showcase both sides of my work I guess. The stylised Expressionist side, and the lesser showy side which is all about being precise and which I dip into much less. . .

Anyway. Enjoy.

Coming soon, an all singing, all dancing, all Puffin blog. Okay, there may not be singing and dancing, but there will be puffins. . .

Black and White, #3 & #4

. . . two further black and white pieces, one - the second here - more stylised, while one is a bit more realistic than the other three have been and maybe isn't technically black and white because i used some buff titanium acrylic which is just an essentially colour for anyone who paints people.

buff titanium. the absolute best base for fleshtones there is.

admittedly here it's used to make things a bit more subtle, and thus i'm maybe going to rework the 'ode' paintings i've done thus far including #3 to incorporate it - i like the way it works with the black and white, it adds. . . . SOMETHING.

anyway, i think this much more realistic little painting - again, about A4-ish and done on a scrap of cardboard and left rough in areas while worked tightly in others - is one of the best things i've done recently, it has some lovely quality. it's simple and uncomplicated. simple and uncomplicated is good. . .