Fishing

Some parts of the island are incredibly photogenic, as if specifically designed for postcard manufacturers.

Doodle

Not working for anyone else means I am considerably less bored, and consequently spend less time doodling.

But sometimes during the English lessons I give, or when I am waiting for students I have moments of enforced idleness which I can spend doodling.

Mentally, doodling involves reproducing something from inside my head - I never draw things I see in front of me. Doodles are made on a tiny scale and are highly concentrated like postage stamps or an engravings and are very intimate creations, not intended to be seen by others.

In doodling, I have become very conscious of the sort of marks each type of pen can make and their direction. My favourite pens are Bics, especially those with larger size ball-points (I tried using a fountain pen, but it was too heavy- you can't use a fountain pen faintly, which means you end up having to "dive right in" into the drawing knowing for sure what result you want. This brings a feeling of risk which is inimical to doodling). A ball pen can be used to make a variety of weights of marks so you can gradually work towards your final image. You don't want to have to know what you want the end result to be when you first start doodling.

This quality is essential, because doodling is formostly a process led art form. The end results are relatively unimportant.

The best doodles have an unforced quality. This cannot be contrived. The scribble has to flow freely, un-self consciously- it's a bit like talking to oneself or chatting to a close friend late at night, and you have to feel at ease with yourself to doodle comfortably.

I often draw letters, usually serifed- it's very pleasurable to trace the curve on an "S". Other common subjects for me are faces (usually of women or children), horses, vaginas, cats, flowers, ellipses, eggs and hands. I like cross-hatching, and I like serpentine lines. I rarely use staccato marks.

I daresay there are deep psychological explanations for this choice of subjects (Freud wrote some very silly essays laboriously "explaining" the thoughts behind da Vinci's famous doodles), but some things are simply more suitable subjects of such tiny drawings than others- with such a tiny amount of space the subject cannot require too much elaboration to be recognisable. This is one of the appeals of letters, in particular.

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Knowing that one might later show the doodle online has a negative effect on me, making me feel inhibited. I know the drawings will be judged, first by myself as I photograph and edit them, and then by those who look at my work on Flickr.

Photographing Florianopolis

Things I like to bring out when photographing in the city.

1. Silence
2. No cars
3. Bright colours.
4. Emptiness
5. Different levels, hills slopes etc.
6. Shop fronts (best if not chains or franchises as the design of these is too heavily mediated) and businesses.
7. People working, or minding their own business.
8. Sunshine and strong shadows to bring out architectural detailing.
9. Repetition of architectural themes, windows etc.
10. Penetration and entrance- being able to see into and through spaces.

I am not really trying to represent Florianopolis at all. I'm trying to produce my own, more satisfactory version. There's a residential area of the centre behind Pizza Hut that seems particularly good at for these qualities.

More images here-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/sets/72157616633654064/

White Wall

The incidental scratching is very nice, and impossible to happily create as a painter- it's the casualness, the randomness of the marks.

I was always too heavy, too deliberate as a painter, which is why less immediately controlled media such as monotype or photography, suit me.

Arrangement and comparasion

Art here which is about arrrangement and the comparasion of forms across a flat plane. It's called "Anglo-Saxon attitudes".

It was difficult to photograph this, and I apologise for the quality. It is a painting that readily refects diffrences in light, and appears different wherever you place it.

It wasn't hard to paint, and his makes me think how funny it is how easy it is to paint sometimes. The work just flows, and you produce good stuff. The things that are hard work usually aren't much good, in my experience. But I grew up in Scotland where hard work is a value in itself and it's hard to shake the mindset that tells you that an easy thing can't have more value than a difficult one.

The picture is 92 x 71 cm, oil on canvas. I want to work larger.

A bicyclist and his friend

These photos give an impression of the vastness of Brazil.

Because houses are built along the sides of roads, close togther, or packed tightly on hillsides, you can get the false notion from the street of a crowded country.

In Canada, Collaboration and Wire Sculptures

I've abandoned a collaboration with a Canadian, where she was supposed to provide me with photos, which I'd use as a basis of stories. She wasn't really pulling her weight and her photos weren't really good enough. I'd entertained a sort of fantasy that I might be able show her rapidly how to produce better images, but that notion turned out to be false. Ergo, it was futile to continue.

There are a couple of the stories here- there were supposed to be eight.

This is often the way with collaborations- people enter them without really thinking about whether they are really committed or not, and it turns out to be a waste of time.

I think the appeal of collaborations is that it offers a relief from the fairly lonely business of making things, and you can believe that one person at least- your collaborator- is eager to see what you come up with. There is also the idea that the collaborator brings skills that you don't have to the table.

But in fact it is rarely like that- often one or other party doesn't deliver the goods, or is only really interested in the collaboration as a vanity project. And in my case, I am a much better photographer, so depending on her was a waste of energy,.

In that respect the experience was good, in that it has helped me see that I know an awful lot more than I realised.

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It is great fun making these little desk-top sculptures, balancing the bits of wire and photographing them. The act of balancing things is enormously pleasurable. I wonder why?