some recent sketches

Recently I seem to have developed an ability to either piss people off or come across as impatient and uninterested (or even belligerent) in my writing and more generally. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First I'm attempting to be more honest and critical when I review things. Clearly where I feel I have a better idea of what's happening I feel more able to articulate specific criticisms. Personally I think it's more respectful than not tackling things I have a strong view on.

Second I'm less patient. I don't want to explain what I do. If I could explain it I wouldn't need to do it in the first place.

Which I suppose brings us to sketches made since late October this year. I think the first page may already have been posted. It's a series of sketches towards my Long Lankin project. None have come to anything yet although this page shows an early (possibly the first) iteration of the plaintive branch that's become an independent idea of it its own.

The next page shows quick sketches from memory of Eduardo Paolozzi's Frog Eating Lizard and Elisabeth Frink's Bird as featured in the Voices books written about elsewhere. They relate to the plaintive branch which I would like to cast in metal.

The next page shows more sketches towards Long Lankin. The top sketch illustrates the kind of texture I want. It's taken (rather badly) from a First World War photo. I've seen many photos from WWI of dead soldiers who appear to be growing into or out of the soil - almost composed of roots.

The other sketches try out particular poses. I'm still not sure whether this idea is for a sculptural form for an installation or a performance. Or just another dead-end.

This was certainly moving toward the idea of performance.

The next page consists of sketches just for the sake of sketching. Clockwise from top left:

A drawing from a photo of one of Eye Idols of Tell Brak. These idols fascinate me and will make their way into my work.

A pretty inaccurate sketch of one of my bowls.

My mobile phone.

A glass, a pack of pencils and a mug with teaspoon in it.

This is a sketch toward a performance idea. And yes that's a man in a dress.

The rest of the images are sketches toward new visual poem forms. The two on this page are copied from a page in my diary. The first form took five attempts to arrive at. The second took three attempts. It can take a lot longer.

The first two forms on the page below are also from my diary and took two and seven attempts respectively.

The next five sketches develop one idea while the final sketch is developed and changed on the next page.

In fact without the final sketch on the previous page it might be unclear what the first sketch here and the finalised eleventh sketch have to do with each other.

The final two sketches are tossing ideas around developed further on the next page.

Those ideas are thrown around further here for a while. I then do some scribbling. Out of the scribbles and my initial ideas something finally emerges