I began adding brick structures to the drawing this week, using my Dad's old curve templates to reinforce the The Architect's Garden theme. I began by making mosaics of the brick and tile shapes which fit inside the curve shapes behind the floating organisms.

I began one quick experiment in my sketchbook, playing with making a solid brick structure from the curves. The first one here is a bit dodgy, and the yellowish smudge on the left is a bit of dinner - gross, I know, and professional to the end! (That would never happen to one of the actual drawings). I'm a bit out of practice since the 'Empty Spaces' brick drawings of early 2014, I haven't made any brick drawings since; but The Architect's Garden work has renewed a purpose for them combined with all the templates diary work I did last year, so it's perhaps time to brush up on my technique.
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I haven't yet decided how illusionistic I want the bricks to be for the current work, only that I don't want it to be 'clever' as in Escher's wonderful works; so there will be a bit more sketchbook work (sans dinner, hopefully) until I make up my mind. The decorative, flat mosaic style may be more appropriate for the drawing I'm working at the moment, but I may do something different in the next one. 

Below: Empty Spaces 3 2014, and a detail of the drawing. I did a lot of bricks back then! I forget the exact dimensions now (the original is stored in the loft) but it's somewhere in the region of 60x80cm. The materials are still pretty much the same as I use today; mapping pens and rotring technical pen on Japanese tissue.

My 'honorary brother', Ian, has been in Venice for a few days. We grew up together in the same street in Scotland and did our spell in London at the same time, but now he lives in Germany so I don't see so much of him (especially these days when nobody sees much of anybody!) but we speak twice a week on the phone. Every day when he was in Venice he sent me photos of his hotel and places he had been, which I am sure unconsciously rubbed off on me because as I was deciding on a title for this one I realised there were references to canals, Renaissance buildings and motifs, the romantically scruffy and slightly broken feel of Venice, misty vague shapes, and I noticed the unreadable writing in a foreign language (asemic text) had a distinctly dangly appearance. Ian had sent me a photo of the most beautiful old Murano glass chandelier (in his bedroom!!!) which made a huge impression on me - I love it so much, I reckon without knowing it the chandelier influenced the delicacy and suspended nature of the lettering.

So, this one is titled Letter From Venice. It will be going off to the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh for inclusion in the annual Christmas Exhibition On a Small Scale along with two other works of A5 dimensions. The exhibition is going to be online for the first time in its history. It was a good move on the Gallery's part  because who knows which Covid alert tier Edinburgh, or any of our cities and towns, will be in next month. If the spread of the virus doesn't slow down it could happen that non-essential businesses will be forced to close their doors again. If that does happen, the show goes on - three cheers for the internet! 

I am making plans for what I'll be doing with the small scale works now the monotype ink has dried thoroughly. At the moment they are being pressed flat, so I will be starting work on them this week, aiming to have four ready to ship to the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh by the end of the week. This one pictured above returned to an old favourite shape I have used a few times in the past, which comes from an old wooden Indian salt box. I drew around it onto a piece of card to use as a template alongside my Dad's old ones.

I got nothing done yesterday because I was making face-masks in colours for autumn and winter wear - I say masks, but in fact it took nearly 5 hours just to produce one. I had only intended spending a couple of hours on it, but I was working from a tutorial which I loved, but which I simply could not get to work. The new masks differ from the ones I made earlier in the year in that they have vertical pleats instead of the horizontal ones more commonly in use, designed to be more comfortable because the mask doesn’t touch the nose and mouth; however, I just couldn’t figure out the measurements. I spent a while cutting out a template as per instructions and everything, but it still wouldn’t work. There wasn’t enough room to make pleats by the time it was stitched up, and I noticed at this stage it was already mask-sized before any pleats went in. I’m wondering if the measurements given were for the finished product and not the cutting size?​ In addition, my sewing machine simply would not sew over the elastic straps so I spent ages faffing around before realising it would be so much easier not to try with the machine, but to leave holes to poke them in and hand stitch at the end.

Eventually I did it with gathers around the nose and under the chin instead of pleats, and it was a success in the end so at least I got something out of the day. It was much more breathable and comfortable than the others, too. It was fine for me, but much too small for B! I’ll be back on mask-making this afternoon, this time I’m going to work backwards with the measurements to get the dimensions for cutting out the fabric. Look at all the scribbling and scoring out all over my mask template! It's not my tidiest work.

I was honoured to receive this comment when I posted this work on Instagram the other day:

To me, your work is a really inspiring example of how to take a set of artistic questions, ideas, and feelings and truly explore them, rather than just skating the surface ...
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I was bowled over by this, not just because of the praise but because it came from an artist I highly respect and admire. Known as Daniel, please check out his Instagram  Graphopathy - it is fun and inspiring and very intriguing.

Titled Ball Game, this work is available on my Etsy store, listing here

For weeks now I have been contemplating how people or characters might look in the templates drawings. The little figures above came out of the children's book I have been illustrating. I made this digital mockup with one of my recent drawings on my iPad and was quite taken with how the people look solitary and overwhelmed by their environment. They look like explorers on their Grand Tour, but the scene also reminds me of our local park where people are taking their daily exercise during lockdown. The entrance to the park is on a hill overlooking the park, and solitary walkers can be seen scattered amongst the trees and meadow areas. In that respect it brings to mind the works of Lowry, or even some of Henri Rousseau's beautiful works like Carnival Evening.

Well, last week I simply forgot to post this. I did the same with my Binky McKee illustration and design blog, I left both posts in drafts and forgot to publish, so I backdated it today. I was most interested in these leftover pieces of cutout template shapes, strewn across a piece of paper - they really do look like a strange calligraphy.

Another six from the series of Indian frame rubbings. No new work this week, but I find myself thinking a lot about the templates works, especially in the night in that state of half dreaming. They keep appearing to me with figures in them - yes, people! - something I haven't worked with for years. I am interested in the idea and it makes perfect sense in the wee hours, but when I am fully awake the images slip away as soon as I have conjured them in my mind. I guess the only thing to do is try it one day and see what happens.

A number of warm, sunny days last week got me out into the garden, working in my pop-up tent. It fills up rapidly with art materials, papers, tools, brushes, pencils, pens and jars of ink and is all rather precarious. The wind at one point was flapping the tent walls so hard the whole tent was leaning and threatening to spill my water jar. At one point the jar of ink fell over, luckily inside an old, thick-walled leather satchel which has seen it all in terms of art material accidents - the lid wasn't on properly, and ink spilled into the corner of the bag in a puddle, strangely enough in exactly the same place which bore a stain from a similar accident years ago. Such hindrances I took in my stride - they go hand in hand with working in a tent, and I managed to power through a lot of work making frottage prints of two wooden Indian frames as a basis for riffing on the templates theme.

After the frame prints I made monotype drawings of some of the templates. Here are some of the templates cut out and thrown down on a piece of paper, ready to use. I thought they looked like a strange alphabet, flying up in the wind to form words.
By the end of the day, the remaining ink on the glass palette not only bore the residue of beautiful marks but had the perfect consistency to make monotype drawings.

It's my birthday today, and I opened an Etsy shop as a gift to myself - at long last! I will be stocking it gradually with watercolours, including these 6 from the week. When I have enough listings to make it interesting, I'll link to it from this blog.
In the mean time, I hope everyone enjoys the bank holiday weekend in lockdown!

I discovered a liveliness in the work this week, and was surprised when I began to recognise work from my past coming through. I am going to hark back to my days at Gray's in Aberdeen again, because something in the distribution of weight, tone, shapes and marks goes right back to then. Around 1983 we had a class trip out west to sketch the sea and mountains (I think to Tighnabruaich, I may be wrong). Following on from the monotype landcapes I talked about previously, I had begun to develop landscape paintings using lots of inky splotches and dark areas crossed by even darker spots and lines, but on that trip it really came together. Unfortunately I can't find any of those now, but I did refer to them a few years ago in a large sketch book, where for three pages I made little drawings of fruits using every mark I could imagine and a number of tools to make them, including home made quills from bird feathers, and my finger tips. I haven't worked this way for ages, and I am really enjoying it - it's weird how some things just never go away.

These fruits were ideas to decorate ceramics.

Three more new templates works in landscape format. I made quills from birds' feathers to draw some of the shapes, mixing the uneven, splashy ink lines with the precision of technical and mapping pens used on others, collage, and areas of tone created with repeating lines. They are probably the lightest, most free work I have made for a few years and I was pleased that they seem to connect to my younger self at art school. One day when I was studying painting at Gray's School of Art I had exclusive use of a printing press, and I made about 20 monotypes based on landscape drawings I had made out in the Deeside country near Aberdeen. I worked them with loose paint after printing, and it was a simply wonderful day, a big favourite in all my years at art school. Today I am delighted that my new works are reminiscent of those.

The first two artworks made as a result of the templates diary. They are on ruled sheets of paper taken from a vintage Cameron's Register of Class Marks, R.H. The book had never been used; it belonged to my mother, who was assistant head teacher at a primary school in Rosyth for 40 years. The sheets measure 21x34cm, or 8-1/4 x 13-1/2 inches as it was back then, and are ruled in charming light blue, dark blue and pink.

Nos. 99 and 100 - it feels great to have got this far with the templates diary. This, however, is where it stops. I have removed unused pages from the book to allow it to close with enough pages remaining to use for experiments and notes, for I am now moving on to make artworks in their own right which can be exhibited and sold.
Watch this space for new work in the next few days ...