(sub)conscious drawings

In April 2012 I began to make these ‘(Sub)Conscious’ drawings.

I’d had a block for a number of years, stopping me putting pen or pencil to paper, so I decided to try and get over the blank-page syndrome by marking the paper first and seeing what came out of the marks I’d made.

The process: I begin by making marks on the page with a rag covered in screen-printing ink and retarder (a by-product from cleaning the silk-screens when I’m printing jigsaws at work); I put these sullied pages aside for a few days; On later viewing, I can begin to make some sense of the marks, and often the foundations of an image materialises, at which point I take a pen or pencil to the paper.

Like a Rorschach ink-blot, each mark could be read in a number of different ways, and if it dredges an idea from somewhere in my subconscious I can begin. I only allow myself to think consciously as I begin to make some sense of the original marks and so embark on the actual drawing.

You can purchase (Sub)Conscious Drawings via my webshop >

[Drawings 1 to 8 were shown at Dining Room Drawing Club – Nunhead, London, 17th April 2012]

1. We Three Beasts

2. Bear Carnage

3. The Little Critter Draws First Blood

4. Replicant Gary Gone Wrong

5. Walrus Pomp and Doe-Eyed Boy

6. The Lambing Hour Cometh

7. The Shamed and The Shameless

8. Curmudgeon In The Corner

9. It’s A Unicorn!

10. The Great Phil Oakey Commemorative Derby Of 2012

11. Bobo Bleuurgh

12. Springtime For Hitler – SOLD

13. Needles And Pins, These Four Limbs

14. Oh Mighty Plumage

15. He May Not Look Much, But He’s Mine, All Mine – SOLD

16. These Fists, They’re All I Got

17. Clown Suck

18. Thems Are The Brakes

19. The Day I Got My New Wheels – SOLD

20. Poor Sandy

21. Always Bringing Up The Rear

22. Tell Me, Do You Like My Hair?

23. Pomp And Circumstance

24. Must. Keep. Tail. Dry.