Day 09

'Bank of Ireland', Pencil on Paper

This is probably my favourite building in Belfast and it's a shame that it's unused at the moment, I particularly like that the front façade faces directly down Royal Avenue meaning it's visible all along the main street. I actually decided to draw the front face of the building whilst having coffee and looking out the window of the recently opened 'Grand Central' along Royal Avenue which by the way is a quite a nice place to have a 'cuppa' if your ever passing by and in need of some refreshment. Doing a little digging I also found out, for anyone who's curious, that the building was designed by 'J V Downes' in 1928, completed in 1929 and apparently is the first Art Deco building in Ulster... so there's a few factoids for you there too.

A few years back I actually had the privilege of getting access to the interior of the building when looking for some exhibition space and as you'd imagine the building is as magnificent inside as it is out. In fact it would make an excellent space for an exhibition and I've often thought of seeing if it would be possible to organise something there. The main hall itself whilst small has a raised ceiling and because of it's position natural light floods in creating a feeling that it's much bigger, it would be great area for large scale paintings or prints. Throughout the rest of the building there's quite a lot of smaller rooms and extra spaces that would work really well for setting up installation work. As well as this a lot of the features and fittings that existed when the bank was functioning are still there, the likes of the the Vault and a safe that is seemingly in the middle of the room due to wall being missing could be used to great effect to create some site specific work. There is definitely a lot of potential for something to happen there it just needs the right people to take it into their heads and utilise such a wasted and wonderful space.

Week 1

With the first week officially over it seems fitting to reflect on the progress so far, and to be honest so far things have been going well. My main task was to do at least one drawing each day and I've been managing that with relative ease thus far, although at times the time-scale I have to complete the drawings can be fairly tight. The Blog also seems to be working as a solution as to the issues of how to be able to hold myself to account, maintain that element of pressure that I need to remain driven whilst also providing an immediate outlet for the drawings as the idea works towards its resolution. Furthermore the Blog also works well as a way to record and document the evolution of the idea, this was something that was usually lacking in my older work. As rather than compile the ideas, notes and works into a tangible format most of it was lost due to my inability to document the work. Instead things existed as fleeting moments, failed and discarded experiments or verbal creative outburst before swiftly vanishing into the ether. To refer to an earlier post the most important part of the work is often how it moves from conception to realisation, something which I became particularly invested in after reading Sol Le Witts' 'Paragraphs on Conceptual art' as part of a dissertation I had been working on. In particular the following excerpt peaked my interest,

"If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product." 


As Sol Le Witt alludes to the process is sometimes more interesting then the actual outcome, as it's the part of the process that we are most creatively invested... afterwards the work acts as a reminder of what has come before it, all the energy and inertia that carried the idea to fruition now exists only in the history of that object. It is then only by sharing the history of the completed idea that the viewer can become more invested themselves. I see the Blog then as my way to bridge the gap from conception to realisation and provides the medium by which to share this most effectively.

This week has also been about learning what issues are likely to inhibit my progress and how I can prepare myself to overcome those issues. At this moment the issues all seem to revolve around time, or the lack therof, working shifts that start late in the day and end late in the evening leaves me with around a two hour window (morning or night) to complete the work. It has also meant that although the drawings are completed it isn't until late that night that they can be posted. However this is definitely an issue which should partially resolve with experience as I adapt and become more efficient over time. A further bonus I've found stems from writing about what I'm doing this enables me to evolve with the idea and provide new thoughts and tangents to follow along the way. Again over time and with more posts the writing should also become more fluid, more natural and hopefully help to provide a good insight for those that are following the idea.

In a sense what I've found this week, as with most seemingly simple ideas and tasks, the premise of the idea in theory is as direct as the motion from A to B. However in practise it is much more complicated as we never consider the vastness of the number of variables and obstacles that we will encounter meaning that the process become much more convoluted than we initially anticipate, so instead we tend to move more from A to Z by passing through B, C, D, etc. The best thing is that hindsight really is a wonderful thing, and with the experience I've gained thus far on my side I can be much better prepared for the week ahead, and as my experience grows exponentially so to does my preparedness for the following week.

Day 08

'Attack', Pencil on Paper.

This came from an idea I'm hoping to look at more in the future, that being to make basic furniture, household objects and everyday re-usable items from cardboard. The items would be made in such a way that they would initially be the box that they actually came in, they could then be broken down and re-assembled to create what ever object you chose, thus minimising waste. The thought would be that they would also come with a themed design of your choosing or you could complete the design yourself, either on-line or by hand, essentially allowing for the possibility for each item to be unique. The drawing itself then is a concept sketch for a possible theme based on B-movies where elements of a city scape in mid destruction could be drawn or printed on the item with the owner able to dream up their own monster or villian that is in the midst of attacking the city.     

Day 07

'The inconvenience of situations', Pen on Paper 

Today's drawing is just a quick one as got some other things to do this evening so will be shooting off soon... Thankfully out of work a bit earlier too so gave me plenty of time to get the post sorted, and make sure I got enough time to fit the drawing in. So I'll keep things short and sweet for now maybe add a bit more of an update tomorrow... the notion for this came from a general conversation after watching an old horror movie about werewolves, not particularly sure which one?... there was just something about the thought of a werewolf trying to live every day life, being allergic to every day silver household objects and how inconvenient most normal situations could be that it made me laugh until I got that feeling where the back of your head hurts.    

Day 06

'The slow death of the English language?', Pencil on paper

Another day another Draw, the whole thinking about this stems for toying around with phrases and sayings, again continuing on the idea of word play, and the images that we associate with those familiar words.

The iconography of the skull will forever be closely linked to death and also Hamlet with its famous 'to be or not to be' soliloquy, it's normally one of the first things that comes to mind for me anyway... so the concept for this came from reading a ridiculous story once that in order to get High School students interested in Shakespeare it was going to be converted to 'txt speak', Apparently the notion is that it would help students to understand Shakespeare more easily which is quite possibly one of the most idiotic and counter productive things I have ever heard in my life... 'txt speak' is one of those things which I tend to use as sparingly as possible as it is, mostly as it irritates the hell out of me, It's also something which for the most part tends to make little or no sense... especially when an entire sentence is constructed with words that don't have any vowels or letters are inexplicably replaced by similar sounding letters. 

e.g " i iz soz 4 d smellzzzz u hd 2 sufr i juz pizzd myslf n dud a shet n meh pantz"

You need a fucking translator and a instruction manual to even come close to understanding half the stuff people write, honestly Shakespeare must be spinning on his own axis in his grave he's so angry... and in a bid to anger his bard ghostly self once more I found an excerpt from the aforementioned Hamlet Soliloquy lovingly reconstructed into idiot speak:

"2 b, r nt 2 b dat iz d Q wthr ts noblr n d mnd 2 sufr d slngs & arowz of outrAjs fortn r 2 tAk armz agnst a C f trblz, & by oposn nd em?"

The slow death of the English language indeed... will the over use of 'txt speak' slowly dumb down the masses, is it better '2b' or would you rather 'not to be'? That's essentially what the drawing references... well that and skulls look pretty cool! 

Day 05

'I sold my soul to the Breville', Pen on Paper

Decided to continue on with yesterday's theme of wordplay, again this is an idea that's been floating round my head for a while just never had any real impetus to follow it through, actually it seems that has been the general theme of the week so far... the revisiting of old ideas. In fact thinking about it, the drawings will most likely continue along this route until I take some time to get some new stimuli to fuel the whole process, think that's probably what most of this weekend will involve, taking photographs, collecting images and doing a bit of good old fashioned research to give the whole thing a bit more direction. In many ways to me that is possibly the most important part of the work all the little, sketches, scribbles, notes and forgotten ideas that take you from one process to the next so it might be quite interesting to incorporate that into the Blog from time to time to help give the whole project some narrative and see how things are evolving... Any way until the next draw stay classy.

Day 04

'Lions' Share', Pencil and Marker on paper.

Just started back to work today after a long break over Christmas, which I'm sure for all of those of you who have recently went back to work can understand is an undeniably horrible feeling. It's amazing that no matter how much time you have to prepare yourself, the instance the realisation of starting work again enters your brain it generates a sense of apathy so overwhelming that ever sinew, every synapse grinds to a halt, rendering you practically incapable of doing much of anything... On top of this you seem to spend the entire morning and journey to your place of work creating scenarios that involve you somehow not having to go, things like:

- Getting seriously injured, but not so seriously injured that you may die or be unable to go out that weekend.

- Someone has taken seriously ill and you must rush to their aid, but not so seriously ill that they might die or leave you unable to go out that weekend.

- Your house collapsed around it's own gravity before imploding, but not so much so that you don't have a place to live or somewhere lacking in gravity in which to hold a party before going out that weekend.

- You happened to catch a flame whilst trying to griddle some beef, but not so seriously a flame that you would die or be unable to eat the beef before going out at the weekend.

Pretty much some of the most convoluted and ridiculous set of circumstances possible will flash through your brain and for an instance you'll actually seriously consider them just to put it all off for another day. Instead your forced to hang on to those tiny moments that actually exist to stave off the process of actually beginning work, staying in bed that little bit longer, pretending that you really need to go to the bathroom and hiding there for at least 5 mins, reorganising all the stationary on your desk so that it's perpendicular to each other and purposefully looking for something you don't really need or already know where to find as your convinced you can't work without it, all in all the amount of effort we put into trying to get out of work maybe it's better to just get on with it!... which rather untidily brings me to the actually point of this post the Drawing.

This like yesterdays's drawing is a concept for a T-shirt design I've had in my head for a while, like a lot of work I've done in the past it references my partiality for plays on words, something you'll probably see will become more evident over the course of this project. Also I don't exactly know why but this image never fails to raise a smirk on my face so hopefully it will do the same for yourself.