Angela's Dogs

Today I was thinking about Angela and her lovely dogs. I spent some time in her home in France trying unsuccessfully to capture the eclectic collections of collections she has collected. The visual overload is impossible to convey through photography and drawing seems like a less rude manner to capture a visual essence of a place. This is one of her three dogs asleep on her bed. They are lurchers who in stature and physique are almost like Giacometti drawings, I tried to translate this inbuilt elegance from the dog to the page.

Children

I stared so much at my son when he was a baby, I could not believe he was really mine. I was conscious that he would change really fast over a short period of time and I wanted to recall the changes. Drawing can permit staring, it is a passport to a form of staring that would otherwise be considered rude and not tolerated. When I draw him now he is a tolerant model who can sit still without too much effort. We both learned from this process.

Baby pictures

My mother told me that I would be sorry if I did not draw my children when they were babies. It was difficult to be thinking about sketching while trying to feed a small child and it was easier to draw them as they slept. When drawing your own children there is a more intense understanding of how they look and as they develop you become more familiar with their developing expressions. For this reason I found it gratifying to take the time out to draw them and when looking upon these drawings now I feel they have captured those precious moments with some level of accuracy and authenticity. I feel that I can also picture what was not in the drawings but in the surroundings, The colours and textures of the clothing and the temperature at the time.These sketches are special as they represent records of transient moments that might have passed without notice.

Beach moments

People are less inhibited and more relaxed laying on the beach, less concerned by the behaviour of others. When on the beach I study people in repose, it consolidates my own experience of the time I am there and looking at the sketches evokes strong recollections of the time spent making them and the location and events around the time spent drawing. It enriches the beach experience if there are people dozing and this is a deciding factor in where I pitch myself and my family when arriving on a beach.

Sketches made in a naive moment

Quick sketches made during a lecture in visual language. I was supposed to be doing the lecture the following week but was captivated by Alan's animated style. Within an hour of making these drawings I was shocked to be taken off the module "given my marching orders". At that point I was not wise to the ways of Higher Education. 6 years later I realise that on a temporary rolling contract you can be taken off modules after having taught them for several weeks.

Sacha, Daphne and Dil

Sacha, Daphne and Dil were all enjoying this lazy afternoon. Each mark of the pen etched the memory of that moment onto the page. The drawings form a constructed recollection.

sketches from Spain

Inside sketchbooks lie moments that have been carefully observed and etched into a memory state. These images are essences of the moments they represent. Here are some studies of Dil's feet done while she read a newspaper on the terrace of her apartment in Andalucia. I have clear recollections of the restful moment we shared here. Now she is no longer with us I still recall her feet.

sketchbooks

Personal recollection is a resource to draw from in creating art.
"Animation itself is the hard copy of psychological memory."
This is a quote from Paul Wells in Drawing for Animation.
I have thought about this as I browse through old sketchbooks, they form a visual record of my own personal history. Each sketch represents and records a specific moment that I have personally captured in a concentrated form. As a result of the intensity of concentration necessary to attempt to capture such records these drawings can be said to be the essences of memory.