2003, into 2004

2003, into 2004....

Beach Boys, Brighton, crusty painting, high faluting ideas, specific palettes...

Crusty etheriality...


Not long after I graduated, I discovered the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, and I found this gave me a good deal more to believe in.

At the time I lived in Brighton, in a little terraced house on a steep road opposite a nice little church with seagulls on the roof. I was in the real world now, except I wasn't.













I was unabashed about being soft and having feelings.
(Goodness knows I always have to have something to be unabashed about. I'm pretty much abashed about everything else.)





Part of me finds these a bit namby pamby. Part of me accepts them as part of the past. Part of me quite likes the naive qualities and sometimes I think if you stick with naive qualities you attract people.










but it was all a bit fragile, breakable by unbelievers ... and by my self-doubt

and you can't sell your feelings and your sincerity very easily


though I remain unsure what you can sell very easily.

and the things you're sincere about change....

Smudged Pillocks

I'm not obsessed with wrestling at the mo, but I should have a show of my wrestling drawings coming up, so I've been wrestling with drawing through wrestling drawings. Ultimate Warrior!





I want to use pastels more and hone my techniques through honing.





The explorations felt valid, the muse came and went in a floozily fickle fashion.

















Peculiar bonus: the cover of my diary beginning 10th December 2001, ending 16th July 2002. Different times. I was at once more and less confident.

Going back to boring

Here are some drawings that have been done for a while but that didn't make the blog because of being the first stage, the conservative drawing, the boring drawing, not fun enough, etc. Just studies. Just doodles. Just learning. No particular place to go. Unfocused. Likenesses only loosely grasped.

But I was looking at some of them and thinking, they're not so bad.






Besides, I'm thinking in terms of getting more subtle, rather than getting more wild and crazy. Retracting my claws. Retreating to a state of measured moderate centredness in order to find the truth that way.





I quite like Beatrix Potter at the moment. And her scientific naturalism and love of fungus.









This next one's a mess. But sometimes, mess is what one makes.





Gosh, aren't I chaotic. It won't do. Still there's just so much nice stuff to look at in the world. It's not easy to decide.





Here is one of my last wrestler studies. Randy's uglier inner qualities are seeping out increasingly.





I've actually cancelled my Sky Sports subscription and am on a break from watching wrestling. I have broken up with it. Still, I have plenty of material still if my ambivalence lets up.

Here's when I suspended my judgments and tried to look anew at these two faces. I had been overly mean to John and overly kind to the other one, possibly. There are lots of aspects to a face. It's almost like they're alive.





Here's Katie the moon scientist before she was pink.





'Hair not pretty' I wrote.





Here's Bob having fun in zero gravity and having no boundaries.





Note the Rex rabbit 'studies' in this one.





Meditations on a waxed sex monster. These drawings often threatened to become something obscene and riddled with rudeness. But I never quite went there. That would be... a niche.





So I shall make a nicer taste by leaving the last word to Jeremy Fisher. In this picture I identify with Jeremy. Jeremy is me, or perhaps you, and the stickleback represents all the scary things in life.





NB. sorry if any of these have actually been blogged before. It's hard to remember everything. They're all familiar to me, but I hope it's from real life and not from prior blogging.

Many Tiny Lines

I've been arting... I got a book about Durer's drawings with my book token so I have done some studying Durer and his lines, but also thinking about kitties and kitty breeds.

Here is a Pixie Bob and a turban.





Here's a Havana Brown cat that looks like an otter and Durer's Oriental King.