Doodles in the margin from an artist living and working in the Scottish Borders.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Emmaretta's Red Robot

One morning on a bike ride I had a whole kids book story (in rhyme) planned out in my head, then I went home and really screwed up the drawing. I came back to it yesterday, and here it is.

I don't know why he's wearing perspex flares, they didn't appear in any of the sketches or the penciling and yet there they are.




Sunday 27 May 2012

Putting Fish on the Map.

I bought some old maritime charts a couple of weeks ago, with a vague idea of using them in  some sort of mixed-media way, but it wasn't until I read a quote from W.B. Yeats about the 'mackerel-crowded sea' that any sort of idea crystallised.

It wasn't a massive leap of an idea, because it was essentially 'draw fish on map.'

The Mackerel-Crowded Sea, mixed media, 30cm x 42cm.




Saturday 19 May 2012

You Have Nothing to Lose But An Unpleasant Brown Residue.

I really enjoyed this, a commission from Holy Island-based espresso engineer Neil Anderson, aka Coffee Repair Guy, to do him a new logo and image.

He had some ideas about Coffee Repair Guy as a superhero character, mixed in with soviet propaganda poster style, so I worked up a couple of comic hero ideas and one that was out and out sovietified. I was a bit surprised but pleased that he picked this one, because it was the one I liked the most:



although privately I still like this version with the red text at the top better:



The other two working ideas, which didn't get as far as colour choice:



Tuesday 15 May 2012

The Caretaker.

New 'scape' drawing, 'The Caretaker.'

Pencil on A3 paper. 


It started off as two thumbnail doodles;


then this;


 then this;


neither of which I liked, so I went back to pencil. I like pencil. It's an odd amount of graft for something I'm a bit indifferent about now that it's actually finished. I read an article about pencil techniques after I'd finished which warned that pencil drawings can be almost photographic but oddly lacking in life, which I think is what's happened here. There's not a lot of life in it, and it's compositionally quite confused. I've done a few of these kinds of image now and not really felt that I've caught what I was aiming at yet.

And you have to look closely to find the title but he's there;


Saturday 12 May 2012

Time Passes

From work in progress; passage of time page.


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