Old Ink New Paper

Post Opening 006

2007-05-01T20:19:00.001+09:30

This is where Old Ink New Paper is residing now, Whyte Space. Notice the attention to detail hanging job done here - that was me. Whyte Space has been created by Don Whyte and his framing business in the past two years - i have a feeling it may become a bit of an institution within the Darwin arts community. So i am glad to be one of the opening acts.

Post Opening 005

2007-03-17T18:31:00.001+09:30

Welcome to blender, my new 3D environment of torture. With a learning curve nothing the likes of which I have encountered before, this program baffles me with its capabilities. It is like sculpting in virtual three dimensions, well it's not 'like' - it is exactly that. This is where my future work is headed - toward both virtual and actual three dimensions. Any of you out there considering virtual three dimensional compositions of any kind (just check any of the galleries available). This is an open source program which i cannot recommend more highly - i already love its interface despite my inability to comprehend many of its capabilities. Unless you wish to pay mega bucks this is the program to get you started in three dimensions.
So my aim for the next exhibition is to create three dimensional works which may be explored within a virtual three dimensional online environment. Anybody out there wishing to host my domain name gratis - i would be extremely appreciative of your donation.

Thank you for your time.

Post Opening 004

2007-02-26T09:30:00.000+09:30

Here we are, the last day of the exhibition. I bump out after the gallery sitting today. The image here is a collection of random shots from around the gallery, the obscure angles that usually go unnoticed. It begins with the comments left about the exhibition.
Over all the feedback on the show has remained very positive. From here the prints will be displayed for about a month at Don Whyte Framing, after which they may spend some time in empty shop windows around the Darwin cbd. Thanks to Ivor who has rapidly gained credit on my all time top ten legendary humans list.
Through the show I feel as if I have experienced a personal growth spurt. There is no substitute for pushing yourself to accomplish what you set out to do - I think this is the most valuable lesson I have learnt through this experience. The recognition by others of this effort is a very welcome bonus, while not the core of the gratification I have drawn from this process. This has come from proving something essential about myself to myself. This show has been my most satisfying experience in recent times.

Post Opening 003

2007-02-17T10:25:00.000+09:30

This is a panoramic shot of the gallery space. I shot it with a Nikon 8700 on a tripod and simply rotated the camera for each shot on a basic setting with no flash. Stitching the shots together in Photoshop, the only manipulation consisted of blending each shot into the next. This is why there is a large degree of colour and spatial distortion, I like it a lot. Next week I shall attempt something on the opposite end with uniform colour and scale - with the aim of creating a virtual three dimensional copy of the space. At the moment I am thinking a program similar to GoogleSketch should be able to facilitate this.

Post Opening 002

2007-02-11T17:37:00.000+09:30

So here are a couple of stills from the video piece. It is impossible to get an idea of how the images move from this, but at least it gives you an idea of how eclectic it is. I've calculated that my 293 seconds equates to 7325 frames, which makes me feel a whole lot better about the video as I worked on many of those frames on an individual basis. Everybody I have spoken to saw the exhibition in a positive manner and the only criticism I have received is that I did not include pricing on my blurb. My only excuse in that respect is that I really did not expect to sell anything as I am a bit of a naive idiot. Just for the record, all of the framed prints are available for $150 each.

Post Opening 001

2007-02-10T12:33:00.000+09:30

Whew, that was one epic journey. We had a very successful evening with between 40 and 50 people, thank you to everybody who attended. I am posting this from the gallery, as I am here each Saturday for the next three weeks. This image gives you an idea of how the framed prints look on the walls. As I predicted, work on the video peice was still happening the night before the opening. It is not precisely what I had imagined and came in at a whopping 293 seconds, but it really accomplised what I wanted; a messy related juxtaposition to the framed prints - movement and colour. I am so happy right now.

Image 050

2007-02-09T09:24:00.000+09:30

Tonight is opening night and I am feeling surprisingly calm about the entire affair.
This drawing is very similar to Image 047 except a more detailed study, the reason for which being that it was drawn in a smaller A6 sketchbook (you can tell this from the ring binding at the side). Printed to scale on an A5 sheet improved on the original.
Well, pretty much everything is done - bar the drinking tonight. The prints are on the wall in the gallery, the video piece is playing through the projector above my head as I type this, the blurb for people to carry around the gallery is completed, the right people have flown in from far away and the food is ordered. Despite my own inherent self doubt, this may just work.
Further posts will consist of photos from the opening and stills from from the video piece. None of this would have been possible without the help of my beloved Lisa-Marie, my sister Natasha, Matt the Legend and Don Whyte Framing. Thank you all.

Image 049

2007-02-06T05:23:00.000+09:30

Titled 'Organic Forms', this drawing is not of anything in particular - but it looks like it could be. The top portion began as a tracing of a tooth-pick.
I am elated at the moment as we have just completed hanging the prints, it was impressive seeing them all together. The gallery space is a rectangle with the images filling the two long walls and one of the short, the video projection will occupy the other short wall. I had intended to display them in order, but this changed as soon as they were up as it was just not working visually. The chronological order of the drawings will be indicated by the numbers which correspond with this blog, but this is not essential to my theme.
Many thanks to Matt.

Image 048

2007-02-05T19:59:00.000+09:30

It surprised me just recently while framing the prints, that this image was not instantly recognisable as a cloud. Matt looked at it for some time, then glanced at me, went back to looking and eventually said, 'What is it?'. I currently work with Matt as a picture framer at Don Whyte Framing "There Ain't Nothin' We Can't Make Square-ish" (obvious plug for Don there).
I see this image as a tonal map of a cloud, my mind fills the shapes and contours with specific colours and hues. It was drawn from observation and necessarily completed quite quickly, as clouds tend to move.

Image 047

2007-02-04T20:13:00.001+09:30

Drawn about two years ago, I think this drawing shows how Darwin has gotten under my skin. It really is a great place to live.
This was a design for a simple scenic painting. I imagine the foliage rendered as a silhouette in three colours; off black, dark green and a light yellow green with white highlights on the outer edges of the leaves. Muddy the greens with brown for the trunk and lower foliage. The sky would be the cerulean blue of the dry season, with maybe a wisp of strategically placed cloud. I still haven't gotten around to doing this painting.
This is the core purpose of the sketchbooks, as a repository for lost ideas good and bad.

Image 046

2007-02-04T15:11:00.000+09:30

Just what is going on here, I'm not sure. With the print I can tell you that I have flipped the bottom section anti clockwise ninety degrees and raised the hands slightly. It does not really make any more sense that way except perhaps aesthetically. I do like the rendering of the lips at the top.
The video peice is feeling much more resolute in my head now. Having a clearer idea of how it is going to come together has eased my anxiety.

Image 045

2007-02-04T13:50:00.000+09:30

Similar to Image 012, this drawing makes the theme a circle. It is another image I can see going on forever, there is no conceivable end to what could be represented in a circle. In the video piece this drawing is linked with the sequence about the squares, which concludes with with a flickering circle. The video still has me concerned - there has been progress, just not quite enough within the time frame.

Image 044

2007-02-04T12:20:00.000+09:30

This is a portrait of my sister, Natasha. Drawn from a photograph, it took about two months of inconsistent work to complete. Patience, Grasshopper. To push this technique further I think requires going to a much larger format than the sketchbook. I am very proud of this drawing.
A dividend of completing this project has been the restoration of the drawings. This page in particular shows a couple of years being handled is beginning to stain the paper, mostly on the bottom right corner. I like this ageing of the paper, but over time the original luminance of the drawings would be lost. This blog is a time capsule of where the drawings are now and the exhibited prints are in part restorations, thus the title.

Image 043

2007-02-03T17:48:00.000+09:30

At the bottom of this page is a portrait of a work colleague, Natalie and at the top is a stylisation of what I imagined the dots to look like magnified. A single dot does look kind of resemble this, although a lot more jagged. Working at the resolution I am and with Photoshop each dot gets very pixelated at this level of magnification but you can still see that each dot is unique. The only uniformity is in the overall shapes which is related to the angle at which the tip of the pen struck the paper. Having that finer control over the shape of the dots gives even greater control rendering detailed tonal forms.

Image 042

2007-02-01T16:26:00.000+09:30

Working from a photograph of a Barreta 9mm, this was an image I thought would translate well to a graphic illustration. The image below it simply followed the theme. It seems to me that weapons, particularly knives and hand guns, are popularised and even glamorised by our media. However, you don't see much of the garrote, theres a weapon that needs more promotion - I may have to garrote the next person who suggests that the bullet would make a 'great tattoo'.

Image 041

2007-02-01T14:58:00.000+09:30

My mild obsession with all things optical is really coming to the forefront now. This drawing is quite plainly titled 'Eye Probe' and is an extension of the technique used in the brainsucker and Image 022. As I have mentioned, this is a very intuitive way of drawing for me, I simply switch off a large portion of my brain and let the pen do the driving. Similarly to the previous drawing, I began at the iris, except in this case I had no clear idea what would eventually fill the page.

Image 040

2007-02-01T11:37:00.000+09:30

Titled 'Dead Eye' this drawing took about a month to complete and is composed entirely of dots. Beginning with the pupil and moving outward, it was drawn from memory. Other drawings have employed a pointillist approach but this was the first where I used the technique exclusively. A modified version of this image was used for the invites to the exhibition.

Image 039

2007-02-01T09:03:00.000+09:30

Isn't this a pretty picture? Self portrait number two, colourfully titled 'Thought Monger', was always going to be a wee bit darker. I am happy with this image as it combines the stylised forms from the 'Brainsucker' with the blind contour tonal mapping of the previous self portrait. It is also, obviously, a caricature of myself. This is another drawing where the wide full length mirror came in handy.

Image 038

2007-01-31T20:00:00.000+09:30

There really is not much to say about this drawing, the mundane deserves representation also. It was drawn while sitting in a pub, thus the beer tap at the bottom of the page. Every now and then the back of a bald or shaved head pops up in my drawings or photographs, curious.
I am now fairly confident I have a solution for my main movie issue, that of making the pictures move without doing it frame by frame. I have had for some time a little program called SlickMotion, which simply pans and zooms on still images and exports as a mov file. Problem is it only operates in 4:3 aspect, while the movie is 16:9. So I import from Slick to iMovie, apply a third party plugin effect which anamorphically applies a hard mat converting the 4:3 footage to 16:9 - it crops the image but I can allow for this. Now export that and re-import into something similar to a green screen mix, except I have the choice of a brightness exclusion. The result should be a drawing - just the ink moving around a static piece of paper. Easy really, don't know why I didn't think of it before now.

Image 037

2007-01-29T12:28:00.000+09:30

The top half of this drawing is what I affectionately call a brainsucker, I think we have all imagined this happening to us at some time. Below it is a simple drawing of an eye with a fluorescent light reflected in it.
The tension is really building now, one week and the work needs to be on the wall and two days later is the opening. The printing is almost done and all of the frames are constructed, just needing assembly. The invites have gone out with a few issues, but they will do the job. This blog is coming along nicely. The DVD is all but done, I just need to complete the movie. Now here is my issue - the movie is feeling like my brainsucker at the moment. There is no time left to think, I need to do, grrr. I also decided a week ago to grow back the facial hair I have in the previous image, that is also not going so well.

Image 036

2007-01-28T16:45:00.000+09:30

'Self Portrait?' is the title here. I chose to draw from a photograph specifically because I was not looking at the viewer. I wanted to question the traditional notion of a self portrait but still show something of my personality. I think I nailed it.
The technique employed here where I create a linear 'map' of tonal forms has been a part of my drawing vocabulary since my earliest life drawings sessions. With my paintings this becomes very tight and controlled as I use it to manage my colour usage. While in the drawings it moves more freely, like a blind contour : one of the first drawing techniques I was introduced to as a student.

Image 035

2007-01-28T09:43:00.000+09:30

The smiley here was in fact a section from a very angry drawing in my larger format journal. A4 in size it is driven by text, photography and collage, while the A5 sketchbooks are restricted to ink on paper, minimal text. With the aim of distilling something essential about the way in which I interact with each medium. Of course this paradigm collapses occaisionally and a drawing which I could have intended to be in the sketchbook ends up in the journal.
Ask me about the squares in a casual manner while we are talking about something else entirely.

Image 034

2007-01-28T09:08:00.000+09:30

Logos have always appealed to the graphic artist in me, here are a few of my favourites. Look at that EverReady cat leaping over danger like its having a good time. This is not a particularly strong or important drawing, but I felt its inclusion demonstrates where my mind and pen go when lacking inspiration. I feel that it is important to just keep on drawing.

Image 031-033

2007-01-26T11:22:00.000+09:30

In the sketchbook these ten images are titled 'Strobe Acid' A through J. For the exhibition I have chosen three from this set, drawings B, F and J. This was a cathartic set of drawings to make, unconscious until the edge of the page but also always conscious of where that edge was. Mindlessly staring at a randomly pulsating digital animation is what inspired it, so flipped horizontal with each image displayed for 0.02 of a second, copied, reversed and repeated gave the same effect. This is how this series of images appears in the video piece, it is the first drawing displayed after the title and it lasts almost all of five seconds. This is also why I have displayed the entire set as a kind of film strip here.

Image 030

2007-01-26T10:37:00.000+09:30

It was very satisfying drawings these hands. Initially intending to do just one set, I couldn't stop. When they turned into an effective triptych (about half way through drawing the second set in my mind), it was a great surprise.
The movie needs a lot of work still, I am finding it difficult to avoid frame by frame animation which is extremely time consuming. I have a feeling I'll be working on it right up to the night before the opening, oh well.

Image 029

2007-01-26T08:36:00.000+09:30

So, here we are two weeks from opening night. Pretty much any spare time or brain space is devoted to Old Ink New Paper at the moment.
After an initial hiccup with the printing of the drawings, I have decided to print them at home as it is quickest and easiest way to get the print quality onto the paper grade I want. So far the prints are indistinguishable from the original drawings except for the fact that they are on clean textured paper, I like it a lot.

Image 028

2007-01-26T07:44:00.000+09:30

I like the challenge of drawing hands and the evocative nature of their depiction. This drawing and the two which follow it are simply titled Hands A, B and C. They were drawn in 2001, from photographs. I think I found a comfortable place between a signature strike and the deliberately placed speck with this set. For the video piece I am animating them so that portions of line work appear to shift erratically, indicative of the way they were drawn.

Image 027

2007-01-25T20:53:00.000+09:30

This drawing was made specifically as a design for a sculpture. I imagined this cast in bronze protruding from the ground like a skeleton escaping the rot of the earth. In an open space like a golfing green it should be cast in three dimensions, while in the back of your garden two dimensions would be fine. This is what I wanted in the design, a form which could be effective either way.

Image 026

2007-01-25T14:02:00.000+09:30

This is a strange mixture. Firstly at the top is a direct portrait of my sister's eye, below and right is drawn from the cover of the fourth edition of the Amok catalogue (source book of the extremes of information in print - look it up), left of which is the draft of what would become the first painting I made in Darwin and at the bottom is of course another demon. I just could not seem to escape them.

Image 025

2007-01-25T13:41:00.000+09:30

...And just like that I moved from Launceston to Darwin. As may be indicated by the nature of this drawing, my first few years here did not go as I had planned. This drawing is more about despair than fear as the text suggests - I actually imagined myself as one of the corpses on the pile this demon was collecting (although I did use my own form for his body). My initial intention was to colourise the image in varying shades of red and pink but as is often the case, I reached that point where I felt adding anything else would have only detracted from the strength of the image.
My advice should anyone enquire about moving to another city, don't take any preconceptions and get yourself a wide full length mirror.

Image 024

2007-01-25T13:15:00.000+09:30

A basic drawing exercise here, make a random pattern and then copy a section if it. The daffodil fondly reminds me of Tasmania, each spring they pop up everywhere letting you know that its getting warmer. Tasmania is delightful during its whole two weeks of summer. The drawing at the bottom is a portrait of a reclining evil man changing the channel of his television with a remote control. Added last it was this image which gave the drawing meaning for me.

Image 023

2007-01-24T19:42:00.000+09:30

It is about here that I began to title some of these drawings. It was not always written on the drawing as is this one, but I began keeping a kind of meta-data page at the back of the sketchbook. This named the drawing and a system of symbols indicated where it was drawn (although I should say that most of drawings from here on where completed while sitting on a bar stool).

Image 022

2007-01-24T18:31:00.000+09:30

I'm not exactly sure where I picked up this habit up. Maybe Rick Griffin or Robert Crumb, prolific sixties and seventies artists/cartoonists who sometimes used stylised forms of what appeared to be nothing in particular.
Images like this started appearing in my sketchbook at the bottom of a page of text in 1998. The drawings here are about (from top to bottom) drinking red wine, the big bang and smoking pot.
For some indiscernible reason I am still attracted to this style of drawing and I think will be always. Its execution, while looking contrived, is extremely intuitive.

Image 021

2007-01-19T15:09:00.000+09:30

Ahh, the Cyber-Cherubs have landed!
I have mentioned that my sculptural style is based on found objects. One day, while crossing an otherwise empty field from where to there I inexplicably found a disregarded motorised baby doll and that is where my fictitious myth of the cyber cherub began.
As soon as I reached my destination I began to disassemble my new found mechanical baby treasure, hoping to discern the way it ticked. Amazed by the advanced nature of its innards, my mind reeled with the possibilities of the future. What if my toy had autonomous control given a set of instructions, it could fly, had flashing lights and would really listen to me? What if I gave it sentience and free will? What if it eventually gained self consciousness?
According to my fictitious myth the cyber cherubs were eventually eradicated in the distant future with a loss of life just under one million humans. This drawing is of the prototype, my first cyber cherub. I made many others which were even more creepy. The eye below it was taken from an anti smoking advertisement running at the time.

Image 020

2007-01-19T09:13:00.000+09:30

Here I am playing with composition, there was nothing especially challenging in technique or theme. The motive was to place small drawings together to form an idea which would be more difficult to represent in one image. This format has had mixed success, this is one of the better compositions.
There is a short story to the dead bird - it was a gift from my cat, Calico. I found it at my back door (where I usually fed her) and promptly decided to preserve it by desiccating it with sea salt. The drawing was made from the result. Creepy, eh?

Image 019

2007-01-19T08:37:00.000+09:30

Here is another draft for my series of paintings about suburbia. I am particularly fond of this image and the associated memories it carries.
While fleeing a critique in Launceston to hang out with my brother in Hobart, i spotted a poster in a chemist window. It was Frank the pharmacist telling us all to 'keep taking your medication' - a pertinent reminder as I was feeling quite unhinged at the time. The poster was so old and sun bleached that it was almost monochromatic with a pervasive blue tone. Found completely by accident it was the perfect image for the body of work I was creating about suburbia (specifically the signified or accepted use of drugs in suburbia). All it needed was a little cropping, every other detail was faithfully reproduced from a photograph of that chemist window. The drawing here is essentially the plan for the crop.

Image 018

2007-01-19T00:40:00.000+09:30

This is a strange little image. Firstly the figure at the bottom is copied from Munch's Puberty which I have placed with a copy of an image by my sister. She has always been fond of drawing dragons and my intention here was to join something of her with what I perceived as a sense of despair and tragedy in Munch's little girl. I have never told my sister this as I was unsure how she would take it, she just seemed to be happy with what I had done with her image as the original was a flat two dimensional profile. It is now stuck awkwardly in between, much like the little girl.

Image 017

2007-01-19T00:15:00.000+09:30

The main portion of this image is a sketch for a series of paintings I created about suburbia, no big surprises there. The figurative piece was from a life drawing session. Strangely, it is a rare occurrence that I would use this format of sketchbook for a life drawing session. Instead I prefer large sheets of loose paper or at least a large sketchbook.
The painting of the house was titled, 'The Drug Dealers House'.

Image 016

2007-01-18T23:53:00.000+09:30

Here is a simple drawing of ordinary objects. The text relates to the theory of everything from the previous post. I hope this does not ruin the illusion for you, but how do you accurately draw a spanner? Well, you lay it on the page, trace carefully around it, move it and simply fill in the gaps. When finished redraw the the outer edge thickening the line where necessary. Easy.

Image 015

2007-01-18T22:21:00.000+09:30

Here it is people, Paul Myatt's Theory of Everything. Which you may remember from Image 005 is based on defining the process of identification. Now I need to keep this brief as too much text on a blog just makes me skip to the next one, so here is the short version;
Basically we identify anything in two modes simultaneously. These are a binaric elimination and an analogous comparison, for example; this is not a dog and this is like a dog. Separately the two modes are ineffective as a binary is too narrow being either it is or it isn't and an analogy is too ambiguous in that it is like this but it is also kind of like this. The two modes operate together by effectively triangulating the information gathered from the two perspectives. Think of the two points in a binaric identification as x and y (it is or it isn't) and those of an analogous identification (it is like this but...) as y and z, thus the triangulation of the identity of any given something is set up. The two modes feed of one another as they bounce information between them and move toward a definition.
That is about it, how it all relates to the diagram above is a mystery to me now with the only bit making any kind of sense being the small equation on the right side. What I do know is that it was this theory on the process of identification which inspired the drawing.

Image 014

2007-01-18T21:56:00.000+09:30

Originally I was not going to include this image, but the more I looked at it the more it grew on me. It is immediate and banal, I find a certain beauty in mundane objects. A power pole, a rubbish bin, a light bulb, are all everyday things which have struck me as something I just had to draw right then and there.
The blue marker will be changed to black prior to printing, it must have been the only implement I had on me at the time.

Image 013

2007-01-18T19:12:00.000+09:30

How or why I do this to myself I do not know. We are three weeks from opening night and as is the case with everything I do of an artistic nature - there is still a lot of work to be done.
All images are scanned and almost all are ready for printing. The majority still require optimisation for this blog, which I am doing in batches when my brain hurts as it requires little effort.
The largest tasks ahead of me are completion of the video and creation of the DVD, which tend to cause a lot of brain hurting. Framing will not be a problem, a couple of solid days. Getting the invites printed is looking a bit tricky and I am still waiting on the addressed labels.
Ahh, what am I complaining about - just get on with it Paul.

Image 012

2007-01-18T18:32:00.000+09:30

This is a simple drawing exercise where each segment of the grid is approached in a different manner. I have always liked this image and can imagine it going on forever. I return to this technique later with circles.
In the video I have animated each individual square so that it morphs into the next. This sweeps away to become the six sides of a rotating cube, which also falls away to become six rotating cubes spinning around each other. Repeated it became six spinning cubes on the six faces of a rotating cube, it was at this point it became too much for the eye to keep a track of. So I gradually sped all the motion up until it resembled a flickering circle. It was an effective experiment.

Image 011

2007-01-17T19:34:00.000+09:30

This image, I'm not so sure about. It is here in this form because the joker will definitely be somewhere in the exhibition, the stuff at the bottom of the page will not.
This is a good point to talk a little more about the process which the images are going through. First I remove the ink from its original paper with photoshop, this is at times a long task and at others quite simple. It seems to depend on the amount of damage the paper has suffered. The majority of the images do not require any further editing, although there are some like this. What happens here is that the stronger portion of the drawing is combined with that of another drawings stronger portion. The final product becomes the hard copy which will appear in the exhibition and in between they all get mixed into the video. Easy really.

Image 010

2007-01-16T21:50:00.000+09:30

Quite often I have just drawn for the fun of it. Theorising what we do for enjoyment can give it depth, sure. It can also make it tedious. This drawing may have surreptitious meaning, but this is not for me to discern - it was just fun for me.
What kind of world would it be without Dr. Seuss? It would be remiss of me if I did not reference that author and illustrator in my drawings. Now the image to the left of that little critter was a construction from various bits of junk i had collected. Also being a sculptor of found objects, my collections can get to quite stupid proportions at times. This particular piece was an exercise where I would randomly pull objects from a pile of junk with a thirty second limit and then put them together with a one minute limit. Then you get to name what you have built, this was a robot's penis. Perhaps this is what a sexually transmitted disease looks like in a robotic cartoon world?

Image 009

2007-01-16T21:34:00.000+09:30

This is pretty simple, playing with something round. This image was also duplicated and inverted but it was an ineffective experiment which would be even less effective displayed here.
For the free-masons out there, notice your "secret" insignia in the bottom right hand corner.

Image 008

2007-01-16T20:28:00.000+09:30

The central images of a cross section of an eye and a television (both minus their outer shell) are the more important here. The ability of the moving image to capture the attention of the eye has always and remains to be a popular theme within my work. Theory on optics positions it as the primary sense, the point where our interaction with the world begins. Even our language is laden with optical metaphor, much of it deeply buried in layers of meaning.
Theory aside, I just like drawing, painting, photographing and even making eyes. There is something which simply draws me to making images of what I consider the most perfect organ of the human body. Although the liver is pretty cool too.

Image 007

2007-01-10T12:53:00.000+09:30

This is an important image as it signalled the addition of a purely pointillist approach to my drawing vocabulary. Before this I had experimented but never to this extent (see Image 001). This technique would later be refined to the point where no line work would be apparent. I find it extremely effective when illustrating subtle tones and fine details.
The subject, well - lets just say that sometimes being an artist can be naughty work.

Image 006

2007-01-10T12:01:00.000+09:30

The fragments of my theory of everything are beginning to draw together. We are still quite early on in my post graduate study where I am primarily concerned with the process of identification. 'How do I identify?' was the question I asked myself and further, 'How would I explain this process to an other?'. My thinking here was that if I could define the process of identification, then I will have also defined a theory of everything as without identification it does not exist. Put simply, nothing has no identity.
Foucalt, Derrida, Lacan and a swag of other theorists are playing texas holdum' with my synapses at this stage. I blame them to this day for my inability to read straight fiction.
This drawing, like the theory underlying it, is fractured and dissonant which made it a successful piece for me. Fragments of unfinished drawings bump against one another in much the same way the chunks of theory were moving about in my mind.

Image 005

2007-01-10T11:18:00.000+09:30

With each fresh page my primary aim has remained to challenge myself either technically or thematically. Experimentation with differing technique and theme is what underpins this image. A company logo, a cross-hatched drawing of my eye, a simple line portrait and playing with a lettering stencil. There is little more to this image than that, however the specific letters and numerals do have relevance to my theory of everything a little later on.

Image 004

2007-01-09T21:25:00.000+09:30

Now here is one drawing that gets some mixed reactions. First a little about the other elements of the image and then where the main figure came from.
The star is obviously an Escher inspiration, the extra mild text was from my cigarette packet at the time and the knife was my late fathers.
The figure began as a photography project in my under graduate years at the University of Tasmania. The aim was of course to be provocative, but on the lighter side. The method was to construct a 30cm paper mache penis attached to a g-string and pose all but nude for various shots at night in the fair city of Launceston. Working with natural light on colour film required up to two minute exposure times which was no mean feat in mid winter. Ah, the crazy things you do in art school. Credit goes to my mate Jason Smith who was my driver and wing-man on that insane night.
The money shot (below) was particularly hair raising as twenty seconds in, a police officer on a motorcycle pulled up at the lights just beneath the clock. One side ways glance and I most certainly would have been booked, luckily the officer did not stop for more than a few seconds.
The drawing was made a couple of years later from one of the other shots from that night. I am most fond of the pubic hair texture which was inspired by Japanese wood block prints of ocean scenes.

Image 003

2007-01-08T13:09:00.000+09:30

You may have noticed already that I have a dislike for humans dressed as fluffy creatures, fact is I just do not trust them and I doubt they have the kids fooled either. Teletubbies I find particularly disturbing, whoever thought of a fantasy land where little creatures with televisions instead of belly buttons live was some kind of evil genius.
Now invariably as with all things digital, something always does only what it can and not exactly what you want. Let me explain, while loading images to this blog my connection with the server kept timing out which was time consuming as it took on average an hour to tell me this. At first I blamed everyone else on the planet who was uploading to blogger while I was (as the dialogue that popped up told me that the server may be busy, try again later). Blogger has an 8mb limit on individual images and mine were well under at 1mb, so it must be the busy server. The two previous images took several attempts to upload and before my third attempt on this image I decided to drastically reduce its size (pixel, not physical) and it zipped away. So the problem is at my end, specifically my connection speed and the solution is to reduce the image size (also time consuming, but not as pointless as waiting for an error dialogue). The moral of this story is that when publishing on the web you should always optimise your images for that medium and you can't trust a teletubby.

Image 002

2007-01-08T09:47:00.000+09:30

The images presented here will be sequential as they appear in the original sketchbooks.
This drawing revisits my cartooning graphic roots. My aim was to take the hyper-real main figure and mix it with direct life drawing. This lends it a sense of realism through association where otherwise it would simply be a cartoon.
The inset two thirds the way down the page is a stylised, inverted and reversed minature copy of a painting I completed around the same time. Which for me is the more interesting aspect of this drawing as it illustrates the nature of the sketchbooks as a whole; that of experimentation. It reminds me of the playful enjoyment I gain from drawing, exploring just what will happen if I draw in this way or that.

Image 001

2007-01-07T20:18:00.000+09:30

This drawing, like the next twenty or so images, is taken from a sketchbook which also served as a theory notebook. I would simply flip it over for each task and eventually the text and images met in the middle. The sketchbook began a little under ten years ago and while the images have maintained a certain resonance, the text has lost the conviction it had when I wrote it. There are some pearls of wisdom, 'Deconstruction is about mapping the pathways of defferal : there is no naked truth'. Today, I am not exactly sure what it meant to me then but I like the sound of it. It follows that these images were influenced by the texts that I was reading at the time. This particular image was heavily influenced by Georges Batailles 'Story of the Eye'.
I should also note here that all images on this blog are pre-post production. That is they have been scanned and posted here as is. All images in the exhibition have been digitally 'cleaned' before reprinting and mixing into the video piece.