Magpies

Back in 2007 when I did this ink drawing of magpies (or more accurately magpie as it's technically the same magpie from different moments in a video), I didn't know it was going to become the best thing I ever did and an inspiration to a series of other black and white bird paintings over the years. Of all the pictures I've made before and since this is the most consistently complimented, and the style I've been most often commissioned to reproduce. 

I've never really been able to put my finger on it's appeal, the looseness and liveliness of the drawing are not the only factors, it's something basically pleasing about the repetition I think, and the sort of half-rhyme rhythm of that repetition. Maybe. And it reminds people of the song that inspired it, you know, one for sorrow and all that. 

Back when this piece was featured in the AOI images exhibition and book in 2008, I made an edition of 20 digital prints at a nice print shop in Brighton. They've been trickling out of my portfolio over the intervening years via etsy and artfinder and at fairs and exhibitions. 

And I posted one today and I realised there are only 2 left. 

If I understand artistic integrity correctly, it would be inappropriate for me to reprint them in the same size as that would invalidate the limitedness of the original 20 printed. So if you want one, act now. Or forever hold your peace. 

Unnatural love of photocopiers.

So I started a new teaching job, which is really exciting for lots of reasons and I'm looking forward to lots of the things that I'm going to do and teach and learning all the new things about my new school. 

But really I am honestly most excited because in the department we have one of those photocopiers that prints in single colours.

Oh. The. Fun. We. Will. Have.

Elegant kitsch

My long summer of thesis writing is finally over, (I done a Masters).  I'm back in the saddle as it were with a typically long list of things to see and do, but some of the pressure off.

When you're, you know, artzy, creative typy, a person that is driven to make things, there are definitely more people like this than just me, when you're that - it can make you a bit sad and crazy when you don't have time to make the things you want to. 

Last weekend I took all the postits around my desk that had things on them like 'remember to connect cultural capital back to Bourdieu', and 'check reference to Ullman - Polyvalancy! - happenstance!', 'pop art is outdated nostalgia not contemporary critique in the classroom' and 'remember to eat' (at least one of these is genuine), and put up in their place all the postits from the side of my desk of ideas for drawing and artworks that i'd scribbled down during the last few months when I haven't had time to draw them. 

And tonight, I sat down and made one of them a reality. 

And it felt really good.

It isn't for anything really, and I'm not even sure if it's about anything. It was just a picture in my head I wanted to get on paper. 

Soon I will do more proper blogging and tell you about other things I got up to over the summer with wedding portraits, live burlesque drawing, flyer designs and other stuff. Probably.

And exciting things coming up in the soontimes too, like a Big Draw event I'll be running with Storyhands in October, and the hopefully not too distant relaunch of my website. And some comics stuff. Probably.

If you are curious about the postit, this is it:

A few hours after I drew it I went back and feverishly scribble the phrase 'elegant kitsch' (misspelled) along the bottom, but on reflection I don't actually know what I meant by this. Deadline delirium. It's possible it was meant to go on one of the thesis postits.

And don't worry mum, I did remember to eat. A lot.