Tag Archives: Thinking

Gardens Project 10: “One apple behind another, some distance apart.”

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Gardens Project 10:

One apple behind another, some distance apart

mixed media drawing of the garden at Tickhill Road

Large Garden Landscape (work in progress) mixed media drawing of the garden at Tickhill Road

“I saw a bird in the garden this morning, it wasn’t moving. When I went out to see if there was something wrong I saw that it was one apple behind another. Some distance apart. “

I’ve spent a good deal of time mistaking things for something else. In essence I made a career of it. I often see birds that aren’t birds, rabbits that are frozen into instants waiting to be caught by a passing glance. I once saw angels stirring their wings on the facade of the Sagrada Familia and shifted my feet to see them turn to plastic bags.

“This morning the silhouette of a deer in the distance resolved into a woman walking a small dog, and a large stone used to stop joyriders. Is it true that the closer you get to things the more difficult it is to name them?”

“Distances in the garden arranged like a victorian toy theatre, the flats guarding the succeeding views as you wind towards the fence. Out of the side of your eyes birds flit between branches punctuating your progress with commas.”

small mixed media drawing of the garden at Tickhill Road

Small Garden Landscape – Version One small mixed media drawing of the garden at Tickhioll Road

“Reification or Gestalt Figure-Ground? Is the illusion created by the action of recognising an implied form or by the failure to distinguish a form from it’s surroundings?”

“This morning (another morning) a bird flitting through the trees next to me landed on a branch and became a curled dead leaf waiting to fall.”

“This morning (another morning) a pigeon turned into the leaves of a bramble by my feet.”

small mixed media drawing of the garden at Tickhioll Road

Small Garden Landscape – Version Two small mixed media drawing of the garden at Tickhioll Road

These notes were made over the last month as I try to articulate the things that are driving the Gardens Project. I’ll post a more in depth look at that that I’m working on at the moment.

As well as spending more than 200 hours working on the terrain for the first chapter of the Project (It’s not complicated I’m just not very good at remembering how to use 3ds Max so I’m relearning) I’ve been painting again.

5 small paintings of mushrooms picked off the lawn, and some poppy heads

Dried Poppies from the garden

Dried Poppies from the garden

And I’ve just started a still life of the bathroom window sill.

bathroom window sill

bathroom window sill – work in progress

I’ve also got two more months of drawing every day

The finished gallery from September can be seen here

  • Draw Every Day – September 21
    Draw Every Day – September 21
    Draw Every Day - September 21 Continuing to draw every day, in a molskine sketchbook using a ...
    See photo »

and October through this link

  • Draw Every Day – October 21
    Draw Every Day – October 21
    Draw Every Day - October 21 Continuing to draw every day, in a molskine sketchbook using a ...
    See photo »

The drawings are posted to Twitter and Instagram each day.

I also completed the drawings that illustrate the beginning of this post, and made some small paintings of holly leaves that I’m not sure about yet.

One apple behind another

Large Holly Leaf

One apple behind another

Holly leaves

and made a maquette of oak leaves as part of the gardens project introductory scene.

oak leaf maquette

oak leaf maquette

Gardens Project 9: Continually frustrated by my old brain.

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Garden’s Project 9:

Continually frustrated by my old brain.

I finished the July drawings, one day left handed and the next right handed, and by the end the left hand ones have a delicacy that matches the right. The difficulty with ‘wrong’ handed drawing is the lack of muscle memory and/or development (strength) in the hand.

pair of drawings left handed and right handed

pair of drawings left handed and right handed

The example above from the end of the month shows that it’s hard to tell the difference.

For the first six days of August I continued with the left hand right hand to finish the sketchbook, then I started a new one doing double page spreads for each drawing, mostly right handed.

End of August drawing of kitchen

Kitchen Window, 30th August

I’m still sitting in the kitchen drawing from the same seat.

The finished July Gallery is here

  • Draw Every Day – July 21
    Draw Every Day – July 21
    Draw Every Day - July 21 Continuing to draw every day, in a molskine sketchbook using a set ...
    See photo »

The August Gallery is here

  • Draw Every Day – August 21
    Draw Every Day – August 21
    Draw Every Day - August 21 Continuing to draw every day, in a molskine sketchbook using a ...
    See photo »

I’m carrying on through September and beyond. The drawings are posted daily to Instagram and Twitter, there are links in the side menu.

3d model of areaa around Glover Street

3d model of areaa around Glover Street

The last two months have been incredibly frustrating for the Gardens Project. I decided I needed to change the layout and the way the ‘news’ was encountered and had to relearn modelling for terrain to do it. Since then it’s been stop start, rebuilding and rejecting and I’m close to 200 hours into modelling chapter 1.

This post is only here because I need to put something up.

Gardens Project Seven: Progress of Sorts

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Gardens Project Seven: Progress of Sorts

I’ve been trying to work out what I’m doing and all I can come up with are questions.

Do ghosts have girdling roots tightening around them over time until they stop? What happens when they stop? What does a stopped ghost feel like?

What about transcience? I have photographs that serve as the only memory of a place and time, everything else in my head is learned. The photograph is felt.

Hauntology? (‘a situation of temporal and ontological disjunction in which presence is replaced by a deferred non-origin’ according to wikipedia) another word for nostalgia in contemporary cultural discourse.

There is a sense that searching for ‘self’ in memory untethers the present and causes drift between the then and the now.

The garden is the liminal space in which all the questions are asked and none are answered. Now all I need to do is find a word for that.

Savick: Transient Landscape

Savick: Transient Landscape ‘the big match’

This image is the drawn from the photgraph that is the inspiration for Savick, the first transition scene in the gardens project. The outline idea is that the passage between gardens opens into these half remembered spaces. I remember little of significance about them, but I have evidence that I was there. Each garden grows the space so that, should you wish, you could go backwards but find things changed.

The video shows the space refined with a transition to the next scene (I’ve substituted one of the gardens here) where you come down the slide.

Drawings:

I’ve continued drawing every day. After I completed a year I moved back to ‘analogue’ drawing – I use a sketchbook now, and coloured pencils!

Draw Every Day - June 2021

Right Handed Drawing 1st of June

The interesting things about the processes is that digital is slower to do because you can correct as you go. Having to accept the mark you make encourages you to be bold about it and not get hung up on little errors. As a consequence some of the drawings are not all that to be fair.

The other interesting thing is that drawing left handed still requires more concentration, the movements you make when drawing are not as ingrained as for the right hand (or vice versa for your wrong hand) and seem to control themselves as much as you try to corral them, it makes the process more difficult but often gives a much better quality of line. The draing above is right handed, the one below left handed.

Draw Every Day - June 21 Progress of Sorts

A bowl of fruit drawn left handed on 6th June 2021

  • Draw Every Day – June 21
    Draw Every Day – June 21
    Draw Every Day - June 21 Continuing to draw every day, in a molskine sketchbook using a set ...
    See photo »
You can look at the other images here.