Category: Advice

13 December: Getting stuck

13/12/2020

Ugh, getting stuck. Who loves that feeling. There are ghastly times when work hides behind a curtain while fire-fighting and just struggling with being alive is all you can do; it happens, and that’s okay. It takes time to heal and it’ll fade into the background. But what about those other times, when everything is apparently fine and hunky-dory - but the bogeyman comes to visit. He settles into your brain like a bleak, growly fog just when art should be proliferating, and all your efforts get scrunched up and hurled into the bin.
Take heart, that can be a project in itself.

Images, clockwise from top left:
Latifa Echakhch Globus (b) 2007
Martin Creed Work No.88 1995
Ívar Valgardsson Watercolour 2011
John Chamberlain Penthouse #50 1969

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I work a LOT in sketchbooks and always have several on the go. My dad was an architect and naval draughtsman, and after he died in 2017 I found heaps of old templates while clearing out his study. Always having been an avid collector of shapes, at the beginning of this year I bought a WHSmith A5 diary to use as a sketchbook specifically for work based on them.

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As well as the work you see here, I illustrate under the name of Binky McKee (my mother's maiden name was McKee, Binky was every single one of my great grandmother's many cats!)
If you would like to visit my Binky website, please click the picture above.

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Candle-light shadows. I set up little 'night theatres' in my bedroom. As darkness falls, I light strategically placed candles and watch the plays begin. A perfect activity for the darkest days of winter.

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