Balla / linear progression v1 - 4, work in progress
I'm looking forward to printing these drawings as new works on paper, probably at around 60cm square, with maybe a 7cm white border all around. I'll need to make a few proofs to ensure the size works well on the wall. Until then, I hope these first studies using this new technique may be of interest, I'm already looking forward to drawing the next series this way.
I thought it might be interesting to see some of the in progress images here too. These are typical of the kind of modular components I’m working with, and maybe give some idea of how the drawings are constructed. I imagine it’s a little like recording a piece of music, elements are layered and mixed as a final composition develops from a lengthy series of decisions that ultimately deliver the final piece. The trick is to be able to discriminate effectively in order to nail down a final vision for the work, and not get too lost in the myriad possibilities along the way.
Print Club News / 7th April 2025
I’ve been enjoying the warmer days here, and working on a new series of drawings that derive from a modular pencil drawing. To be honest, I’ve probably spent far too long editing it all, and it’s certainly been an education in seeing how much time can be used up when delving into a granular edit of a specific drawing. In this case several weeks, maybe a month.
That said, I now have a live drawing that I can fine tune, edit and re colour without degrading the original pencil work, as everything has been scanned and digitised, so each mark is separately adjustable and movable; I think there may be as many as 900 individual elements in play; and it's been interesting to work up a new technique for making work.
Balla, a sketch study for a new animated drawing
I've got a few sketches of work in progress to share here. These are early days sketches of a new process I'm developing, partially although not entirely in response to the RWA's Paper Work Biennial. I wanted to revert back to using graphite and pencil as the basis for a study, which I pretty much always do, but instead of abandoning that work at what I might call the 'fag packet' stage, I wanted to push through and complete a fully realised drawing as a more complex understudy for a new work, Balla.
Binomial / work in progress
I’ve been working on a new geometry, and therefore to some extent a new series of images. I’m working with the title Binomial, not sure if that’s where I’m going to stick, probably not I suspect, but we’ll see.
In this first phase it’s been an engaging look at how best to pack a set of spheres into a toroid, a mathematical puzzle that you might think would have been broadly resolved by now, but in fact I haven’t been able to find very much about the geometry and its potential online at all.
There’s an interesting payoff between the number of spheres you want to use, the way they sit together, and the patterns they create in the larger whole, in some ways rather similar to the way seeds are packed into a seedhead in nature.
Coombe Gallery, Winter Show
Thought I’d post this shot from Mark Riley’s always fabulous Coombe Gallery in Dartmouth. They’re featuring my Cal R piece in the window as part of their Winter group show…
interStella 2019
I’ve been working on a new series of 16 drawings, entitled interStella. It’s kind of a mash up of a number of geometries I’ve been studying, but most obviously an exploration, and complication, of the maths underlying the early works of American legend Frank Stella. I first saw his beautiful, epic, artworks at MOCA in LA in 1991, and was completely blown away. So it’s been on my mind for a long time to try and unpack some of his thinking, and riff on that beautiful style that came out of NYC in the late sixties. I hope I’ve bought a little fresh thinking and technique to bear too.