Tag: process
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This is drawing number 35 in the Red Book. You can see me make this drawing in this video.
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I made drawing 34 in the Red Book live on video tonight. It was an experiment in the format and to get a sense for whether I would want to try it again. I’ll do a few more tests at least. Watch the live video
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More thermal printing adventures. The phone to printer to copier flow makes for some great ways to take previous artwork and also bits and pieces of my home environment and change their context. I gang up the small thermal prints on a quarter Letter page and then copy them at 100 and 200%. And then…
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I have been picking away at this one over a few short sessions — while making coffee. The black structured forms follow the mostly hidden text that was on the page. I think I’ll be pulling some of the enlarged thermal print images into this so I am curious to see how that feels. I…
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This is exactly why I was interested in thermal prints. There’s a whole complex world of marks and matrices as I enlarge and then enlarge again (and again!).
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Made some 200% enlarged copies of the thermal prints. Fun to make secondary drawings on the copied versions. I’ll try also making some 400% copies next just to really zoom in on the pure texture and move passed the frame of the original drawings.
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This is the 30th drawing in the Red Book. I was both looking forward to drawing on this page and also had a certain level of anxiety. The photo at the top of Jesse Owens in mid jump is such a powerful image to react to that I knew I would want it to stay…
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I shared a number of my recent drawings with some friends and it was a nice reminder to keep how and when I share what I do a wide circle. For me at least, I do better at being kind to myself and making more things that feel good to me when I share aspects…
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Because the book that forms the container/surface for the Red Book drawings is a 1976 Olympics commemorative book, it’s not surprising that some of the existing photos and illustrations are sports related. That aspect has nothing to do with why I chose this book to work in and in many contradictory ways I want to…
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I think soon I will sit down at this table and spend more than two minutes making marks. But before then, it is good to still stand here for two minutes to draw grid lines and paste down paper towards something. Marks and motion towards something are better than receding away from things.
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One simple thing I enjoy weekly is cutting the rough circles of parchment paper that go under my bread dough when it is placed in the Dutch oven. That basic act of cutting a circle from a square feels like a creative act. It is throw away but still has a degree of care that…
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Sometimes I just end up smearing things around for a while to see what sticks. Nothing sticking on this one yet.
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After finishing my previous drawing, Truly, in the Red Book last night, I went directly to the next page to start a new drawing. The underlying pages are quite different with the new page being mostly white space with stronger header text. I am only making drawings on the right hand pages in this book…
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I’m part way through this drawing in the Red Book. I think the stripes up top are too dominant in this case so I’ll likely either tone them down or cover them completely.
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Initial mark making for a new drawing in the Red Book. Orange is one of my favourite colours to work with. The existing book page didn’t have much to respond to but I still quickly read through the text to see if words or phrases spark something. That’s part of what I like about starting…
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Our coffee machine is in our basement and I go down there to make a coffee for each of us at around 10am each day. It’s a ritual that stabilizes and warms. Our shared art making space is also in the basement. We both make things elsewhere but most of my drawings happen a few…
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A new quick start for a drawing in the Red Book. You can see the “blank” page in the second photo. The pages that have strong pre-existing images are interesting because depending on the image, my initial urge is to either highlight or obscure.
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This is the 16th drawing in the Red Book. I started this page with some loose “blackout poetry” that provided the main phrase that I later added with some vintage white Letraset. I found a thick roll of heavy striped wrapping paper at the thrift store and I love the high-contrast punch it adds. I…
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This page in the Red Book was interesting not only because it was mostly blank but because the part that was printed had such a strong piece of text to react to. As I’ve said before, my primary reason for working in a printed book like this is the “active ground” of each page. There’s…
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I finished this drawing in a second sitting this morning. In part, it was a good test of some new materials. It was also a nice chance to work with what was on the page. There are only two collage fragments added since the two pre-existing photos are like readymade collage in this case. This…
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This page has two strong photos that already have colour palettes in line with colours I tend to work with. That’s part of the excitement of working with an active base like this. There are both frictions and possible harmonies in how I might react to the surface. Watch me working on this drawing here:…
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I thought I would post a video showing the first pass at a drawing in this project book. The video is unedited and real time. I don’t talk in the video but there’s some scratchy and thunky mark making ASMR sounds in there. Watch on YouTube.
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Trying out a few thrift store art supplies on this drawing. The collage items are older junk shop papers a bunch of which were from a watchmaker’s archives: blueprints, receipts, and manuals. I have regrets from that time years ago because the shop had binders full of materials I didn’t buy. Ah well… The newer…
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Each page in the Red Book (it’s a repurposed commemorative book from the 1976 Montreal Olympics) has something different to react to when I draw. That’s the core of working in a book that already had a purpose before becoming a substrate for something else. Some pages won’t give much in terms of prompting and…
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The sixth drawing in the Red Book came together in one sitting. I started this book project with the loose goal of taking more time with each drawing. But I purposely didn’t make it a rule because I didn’t think that would be a healthy constraint. Because this page had a strong photographic image and…
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The spreads will often be weird/interesting in this project book since I am leaving the left hand pages as they are. So there’s a little play with the original form of this book and my drawings on each right hand page. The text, “life is made of smallest fragments” is from one of the vintage…
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This page showing the “Elements of Design” made me think about the recurring marks in my visual art. I have a palette or a lexicon of marks that I return to. They take different forms and are adapted to a variety of media.
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Just made this for fun to see myself removing marks instead of making them.
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Work in progress in the Red Book. This doesn’t have much more to go but it got late so I’ll come back to it tomorrow. This uses a handmade rough cut circle stencil for the main dots.
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Continued work on this third drawing in the Red Book. I used more extremely crumbling ancient Letraset on this one. I sprayed it with a casein-based non-aerosol fixative to prevent the letters from entirely flaking off over time. I like the look of the instantly distressed type.
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Started on a third drawing in the Red Book and it’s the first one to have a dominant image in the background to react to. Because the photo is a portrait of a person (Lord Killanin head of the IOC at the time) it makes reacting a bit more intentional. I don’t know or think…
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Here’s the second completed drawing in the Red Book. I’m learning what’s it’s like to draw on this somewhat glossy paper. I’m also beginning to make choices about what elements from the book’s content I cover and which I incorporate. Because this was the title page and this book has a modernist grid, there wasn’t…
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Because the Red Book is an existing 1976 Olympics commemorative book, the date is likely to come up frequently on the pages. I was seven years old in 1976 and I feel like that year is going to inform some of these drawings in a way I can’t be conscious of just yet.
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This is the first complete drawing in my Red Book project. I found it was harder to establish when/how to end given my self-assigned experiment to not complete these drawings in single sittings. I’m also getting the feel for how the pages in this book will receive various media for better or for worse.
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Here’s me drawing in the new Red Book art book project. As I say in the video, I’m trying something with this book where I don’t finish drawings in single sittings as I normally do. This is the third (I think) time I have come back to this particular drawing. It might be done? But…
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A few more marks made on this first drawing in the Red Book. 📕 It’s already interesting to sit and then remove myself from a drawing without finishing it. Not exactly comfortable but it pushes me in an intriguing way.
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I started a new drawing project book tonight. It’s a 1976 Olympics commemorative book but that topic isn’t meant to inform the drawings I do. I like having something besides a blank page to react to and I’m sure in some cases the underlying text grid and images will nudge my drawings in interesting directions.…
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This Masonite panel will be the surface for the last drawing in my Openwork series. There will be 30 drawings total and that number is somewhat arbitrarily set by how many of these dollar store panels I was able to find before they stopped stocking them. I’m happy with the number of drawings regardless and…
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Another 44 minutes in 44 seconds Here’s me making Hold True earlier tonight. This is the 28th drawing in my Openwork series. Two more and the series will be complete.
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I’m nearing the end of my Openwork series. I made this drawing tonight and I believe it’s number 27. I think it will be hard and somewhat freeing when this series finishes. I think it’s helpful to me create a somewhat arbitrary point where the series ends. In this case, the ending is based simply…
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I make most of my artwork in single sittings and it’s something I have occasionally held against myself. But I have the most comfort and connection with making when I just sit down to start making something and I am done within an hour or less. I say hold it against myself because there are…
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I’ve been thinking about inconsistent art practice recently. Consistency is something that receives a lot of attention in art making and it has obvious merits. The call to show up regularly for creative expression is valid. Prioritizing time for making in whatever form it might take is healthy. There’s also a certain pressure for artists…
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Here are two videos of the recent beach ephemeral, “Gull”, I made in collaboration with my partner Gayla Trail. Because these are dimensional temporary art works, I like to think of them as existing in many forms at the same time. I try to take photos and video to document them but they often don’t…
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Slight work desk reboot. I like a certain degree of chaos in my art making space. I tend to thrive on some level of happenstance in reacting to what’s at hand. But I haven’t been connecting with this work space as much as I would like over the last few months and so I took…
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Zine plotting continues. I made a couple of these mini dummies at half the size of the final zine. Handy for scrawling notes inside to get a sense of content and page sequencing. This zine will be issue 1 in a series based on an idea I had a few years ago. Trying to keep…
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At least this is how I made one. You should make one too! I’m not usually someone that feels like the way I make things is of much direct value to other people. I feel the same about other artists’ work. I am interested in why artists make what they make and how they connect…
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My connection to art making recently took a more curatorial turn. As I’ve showed in my last post, I was drawn back to work I had made in 2020 and made a small book from that work that I published. I feel very proud of the book and the revisiting this watercolour work in such…
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We use words to know better how we might speak. We use images to know more how we might see. This is part of what art does for us. It weaves aspects of ourselves together to show us ourselves. Not all art does this with strong intention but the effect is the same regardless. Art…
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I have worked for many years now as a Play Designer. Explaining what this means is never a simple thing but I’ll try here as it may inform the rest of what I write which is still bubbling up for me as I type this. I work for a company that makes digital play and…
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Does art lay in wait in an artist’s materials? Is there a drawing inside every pencil, a painting in every tube? Do the artist’s hands contain the art or does it travel from the head, electric and formless, commanding the hand to make tangible from mental? In my conscious mind, there is never any fully…
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Back in 2016, my partner Gayla Trail and I collaborated to self-publish her fifth book, Grow Curious. She was the author and I did the design and artwork. I don’t talk about my design work here as much but I have been working as a designer since 1994 across a variety of media and formats.…
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Since my last post I have continued drawing digitally in Procreate and testing how it feels to both pull from and challenge the habits and modes of drawing on paper. I’m finding myself distinctly enjoying drawing digitally. As I said in the last post, I am using an Apple Pencil on a ~10 inch iPad.…
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I think most artists are remiss at documenting their work. Making careful records of finished art and process can often run counter to how we want to make the art itself. It can also be tedious if not impossible with some media to actually capture a document that represents it in any meaningful way —…