Corn street at night, what a sight.

Here's the final image of Corn street at night. Generally pleased with it but feel the characters lack, well, character. I'd like it be a bit more like a Hogarth in technical ability but I'm pleased that it is comparable in principle.

There are plenty of subtle phallic references, the warm inviting glow of the bar with the dominating scale of the building I hope says a lot about how drinking culture manipulates and controls the masses. It's big business in it's worst guise.

 I thought it would be fun to show the progress of this one as I was afraid of putting the brush to the page for months, and you'll see why.

 

 From the preliminary sketch that you can see earlier in the blog I produced an under drawing that I was pleased with then after months of contemplation I applied the first wash which turned out like this...

AHHHHHH what have I done!? almost completely lost the under drawing. But alas with a lot of work I managed to bring it back together and feel proud for being so bold.

Maccy D's

An initial attempt to do a series of portraits sat in a Macdonalds in Bedminster, Bristol. It took a while to find a good spot to draw from but I managed a few. Not entirely the characters I was hoping for but it's a start.

 

Free Palestine! and Down With Tesco

So I set off to do some drawing on Saturday and stumbled across a protest heading past the Hippodrome. It was a group of Palestinians marching through town and with pen in hand I tagged along. They were stopping traffic but moving along before people got too annoyed, just enough to get themselves noticed. Quite an effective strategy it thought.

 

They were mostly Palestinians but with the usual token paranoid British protester who would stop and shout at every supermarket we came across, he even started on a G4S van claiming they built torture chambers. Sigh.

 

It was a small group but they really knew how to get attention and when to draw the line so good luck to them.  FREE PALESTINE!!!

Why I can't rap.

I was just in the shower pondering various things when I suddenly came to realise the reason why I can't rap. I realised that in order to be able to rap you have to be deeply ingrained in a specific culture, to understand it enough to be able to rap about it. Don't get me wrong this isn't me lamenting over my failure to break into a career in rap, on the contrary I think it's one of my best attributes. For example a rapper I heard once rapped 'mr politician on your television..something something.. all those lies' obviously he's from a politically left culture and understands it well enough to put it to words coherently and sincerely. But has he ever met a politician? Is he talking about all politicians? does he really understand the politician? I'd like to believe I'm in a better position to do so and I'm glad about that. but alas I myself have nothing to rap about. You could say I could rap about being a Barista but I don't have a big beard, arms covered in tattoos, I can make good coffee but I'm not culturally ingrained in it. I spread myself culturally thin, take that as you will but I thinks it's a positive thing. Rappers you could say are on the inside reaching out but I like to be on the outside reaching in, giving them all a high five perhaps.

A quick sketch

Here is a quick sketch I did of a corner building on Corn St. It's a preparatory sketch for a larger drawing documenting the drinking culture on Bristol city centre. I think having the pub as a monumental back drop for the figures will make for a strong composition. It was drawn on a Friday night in situ at around 10pm. The kebab man was suspicious.

Remembrance Day Sunday

 A little late but here is a drawing of the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in Bristol. It's an event I think every one should go to. Seeing accounts of the war in films and in museums doesn't quite bring to life the reality of war, but seeing the people who actually fought in WW2 does. It always astounds me how strong the bonds are between them and their comrades and re-affirms my feeling that great suffering creates great love and that one cannot exist without the other.

An interesting thing to note is that a young man in a Hawaiian shirt and bright comedy sunglasses strolled through the crowd on his way back from a party totally unaffected by the weight of the event. Is that what they died for? I hope not.