80 Beter - doodle

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80 Beter - ink on paper

This is a detail from an A4 sheet.

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Studious girl (happier), angry girl

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Studious girl (happier), angry girl (less studious)

 pen on paper, 9 x 5 cm

 

 

 

 Somewhat feline girls.

 

 

 

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The spiritual one

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Spiritual one, pen on paper, 5 x 7 cm

  

This one owes something to Odilon Redon's Parsifal.

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Detached leg with sock and shoe

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Detached leg with sock and shoe

 pen on paper, 8 x 5 cm

I've been drawing such legs for at least 30 years. I also like drawing shoes very much. I might try to do some during today's lesson.

I can't say that the leg here is very well drawn, and I am not sure if it is really very nice. Well...

  The shape of legs, their curves, are very nice to describe in brisk movements of the pen. I like to add socks or shoes partly because I find toes unsatisfyingly complex to draw.

 

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Fish-dog, face with geometric nose

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Fish-dog and face with geometric nose

 pen on paper, 15  x 10 cm

 

 

 

 

Faces with geometric noses are extremely enjoyable doodle subjects, partly because they allow one to do cross-hatching and create three dimensions. They always make me think of Bertie Bassett -¨Britains Greatest Asset"-  mascot for Liquorice Allsorts.

 

 I like three-dimensional letters for the same reasons though they lack the puzzle-quality that abstracting facial features provides.

 

I very often doodle letters of the alphabet but I feel this merits a posting of its own.

 

 

 

 

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Legged nose; decoding

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Legged nose, pen on paper, 45 x 3 cm

The legged nose is a drawing which I attempted to improve in subsequent drawings: I wanted to make it bigger and give the legs the curves that legs have. 

However, it was impossible to improve. I think that's because when I tried further versions I began to focus on these aspects and would lose the sense of the whole, and the result was awkwardness.

 I think, in  any case, the tendency to abstraction here with the nose being only almost recognisable and the legs and shoes likewise, is what makes viewing the drawing pleasurable: the pleasure of decoding.

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Fat boy with ice-cream; doodling processes

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Fat boy with ice-cream, pen on paper, 10 x 6 cm 

 

The fat boy, absorbed in his ice cream, or occasionally a hamburger, is a sort of Billy Bunter figure. He has appeared in my work over and over, including in some monotypes which I shall try to unearth and photograph this year.

The pleasure of doodles is related to them not mattering. They differ from grafitti, which is necessarily a public declaration. Doodling is very psychologically intimate, a way of talking to oneself.

  I've found taking a doodle and trying to "improve it", either by working into it more, or by trying to make more finished drawing from an idea in a doodle is is rarely successful. You end up wih something that lacks the quality of unconscious confession, becoming stiff.

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Sincere young man

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Sincere young man, pen on paper, 5 x 7 cm

 

 

 The sincere young man is a repeat character in my doodles, which are made usually in lessons- a big advantage of teaching online. 

The character is somewhat of Balthus, or Cocteau- the culture of the 1930s: intense, quite sincere, a little camp.

 

 

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Doodle, some themes

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1. detail from sheet a- face of a perplexed girl

2. detail from sheet a- tower

Above,  sheet a and below, sheet b- recent sets of doodles, done during lessons

These revisit familiar motifs- doodling is often t a leisurely perambulation round one's mind, and has an aspect of comfortable thematic repetition.

Some of these repeated motifs are:

1. the perplexed, but beautiful, girl's face; 

2. triangle, sometimes arranged to form towers or patterns

3. the severed leg and the tiny foot sock, usually sporting a short sock

As usual, I draw in black ball pen. I like a larger diameter ball as I prefer a thicker line and the occasional smudging that you sometimes get. The paper is standard photocopier paper. Doodles should be done as un-self-consciously as possible, and using nicer paper would militate against this. 

sheet a

3. detail from sheet b 

 severed leg, tiny foor with short sock

sheet b

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Two weirdos having a conversation

Two weirdos having a conversation

A pen and ink drawing, about 7 cm on its longest side.

Four more drawings from the weekend

 The errant pixie, Christ the Redeemer.

 Me on my deathbed

 Two pixies mug an American tourist.

 

The captured prince

Four more drawings from the weekend: the wickedness of the pixie continues to inspire me. The drawings are about 5 cm across their longest sides. I don`t use pencil, just ink so they can`t be corrected, and there is an element of risk.

Three little drawings

 A dwarf urinating on a flower

 A faun smoking a cigarette

Modern men

All ink on paper, about 10cm on the longest side.

I am sik.

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I am sik, ballpen on paper, 10 x 10 cm

I am sick: my death is surely imminent: my friend, astonished and deeply concerned visits me. It is a Tragic Moment in History.

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Here I am, an old man...

Here I am, an old man. Mostly bald, cantankerous and slightly weird. Potbellied, I wander mumbling incomprehensible complaints. I dress drably, except for a battered fedora which, erroneously, I imagine to be dashing. Everything I own is worn and has a greasy patina of sadness.

I walk about a neighbourhod which I ended up in through a series of well considered, joyless compromises made many years ago. I prefer architecture to people because it is silent. I live on toast, poached eggs and whisky. I have no friends, my social life long having been reduced to semi-formal exchanges with the postman. Sometimes I try to flrt with waitresses: a pitiful sight. Thus, for company, I aquired a dog which resembles a rat.

I have a long mental list of people and institutions I despise, ranging from the manager of the supermarket to the  US Secretary of State. I try to add to my list of grievances every day. I am considering disliking the postman, though as yet I have no specific reason to. I have no interest in other opinons than my own, unless they concur, or they provide me with fuel for my contempt.

Frigate: doodle

Frigate: doodle

A drawing of a frigate, done during lessons. Not only has it got a giant cannon but, should that fail to destroy the enemy, it also features a  hefty battering ram, capable of smashing the hull of the most thickly armoured ironclad.

Doodle showing fish block sculpture idea

This is a doodle, again made thanks to the longeurs of teaching beginners' English lessons.

It depicts various fancy fish, which have the forms, I now realise, suggestive of pastry-cutters, and a definate de Chirico-esque quality. I suppose their appeal is to do with the way in which something flexible and fluid becomes something rigid and highly geometric.

They would be carved out of hardwood and left to lie about on a coffee table; or they might be very large, also carved from wood, and suitable for a playground or town square. I shall perhaps make some manquettes later tonight from card.

Paraguay / Paraguayan, Venezuela / Venezuelan, Argentina / Argentinian: doodles

Nemesis

Three Wise Men

Doodles made in a beginner's English class, details above

While I am doing them I sometimes have the idea of working them up into huge, insane paintings. But to do that would be to miss the point entirely, because the very essence of the doodle is its incidental nature, they way its scratchy amateurishness leads one into the crevasses of a bored mind.

Alfred Kubin and Odilon Redon managed to bridge this gap between doodles (semi-conscious meandering) and finished large scale art piece, but I cannot, either because of some inner rigidity, or because I am not insane enough.

For me, therefore, the doodle must remain an end in itself.

And I cannot sit down and decide to make doodles, as I would a painting- they seem necessarily to be a semi-conscious, nervous response to tedium. It's the tedium (usually of giving English lessons, in the case above teaching the ajectives referring to Latin American states) that lend them the qualities that, at best, animate them.

The nosepicker

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The nosepicker, ballpen on paper

He's lost in pleasure, indifferent to society and its conventions.

The finger explores ever deeper, squeezing into his nostril. He sensed a bogie on the wall of that fleshy chamber: it irritated, he felt it protrude, provocative from the nasal wall, an insolent presence. He tried to blow it out- to no avail!

So he inserted his forefinger into the orifice, speedily locating the offending piece of dried snot: now he must concentrate and, focussing all his mental energies, he carefully twists his fingernail round to catch under an edge of the bogie. Then, patiently, as not to tear it and to recover it in one satisfying piece, he levers the bogie from the nasal wall, prising it gently off with an exquiste sensation that is ever so slightly ticklish.

It is the assured performance of a skilled nosepicker: economical, swift, stylish.

Days, months, years

Ball pen on paper

This is a self-portrait showing how I am lying down.

I did this while waiting for my student to show. I have to repress the instinct not to doodle during lessons: the desire is especially strong with beginners who can be very tedious indeed. It's suprising how difficult learning a language is for most people, and it's surprising that people often don't realise how difficult it is, so they start language lessons with incredible optimism. But, unless they are motivated by the possibility of gain- such as the chance to study or work abroad, etc- they usually give up fairly soon on.

Anyway, lack of storage space means that most art I make now has to be small or disposable, which means the doodle is now re-habilitated as an art form for me. The internet has made looking at images, usually diminished and always pixillated, the norm and little works of art seem to suit the scale of the computer screen and its intimacy well.

With the internet much is lost- scale, texture, weight; but some things are gained- concision, accessability, speed. I miss the physicality of big painting, but I cannot add to an already big storage space problem by painting more.

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If anyone wants anything of mine from here or my Flickr site then drop me a line: the prices are so low they're almost shameful!

Design for a mural on the gable end of a house

I see the face as similar in its innocence to the childrens' faces one sees in Indian popular art.

Perhaps such a mural as a replacement for the murals which are painted on the gables of tenaments in Belfast (usually featuring martyred warriors, arms and slogans of varying degrees of bellicosity).