How short?

Lockdown has altered the nature of time. Milestones have been taken away, markers that differentiated monday from wednesday, schoolday from holiday; and even daytime from night. Some of us succumbed to the peer-pressure to "make better use of this time we have been given". I saw an opportunity to do something different, to grasp for positivity, to keep from going stircrazy and studied an online course in comic books. I don't really like comic books. But the idea of clarity-with-economy in communication, of identifying keyframes in a narrative; and the ease of using speech bubbles instead of having to worry about voiceovers, lipsynch and SFX was very appealing. Instead I have learnt a lot about mark-making with a limited palette (Black. White. That's it, no grey. No chiroscura, sfumato or other posh words for shading. No mimping.) and oh joy a rapid turnover to deadline. A story in 6 frames. 4 frames. a single frame. Published instantly and for anyone who wants it (because people need cheering up, because we want to stay in contact and posting amusing pictures of shed stops me ranting about the obscenities of the current world situation) Tune in every morning to see who likes it. who "Likes" it. who likes me.

Maybe I'll draw 365 and make a book.
Maybe this is a commercial venture.
maybe I need a BIG project as well as a quick one...

But is it art (my inner Foundation Studies Tutor enquires)?
But is it beautiful? But does that matter? I look at the work of other artists, including some I studied at Artschool with and think, Oh that's beautiful, that's art, why can't I do that. Catching myself out thinking that if it's funny or accessible it's not really "art".

Well, alright then, I'm going to make an animation that is funny, beautiful and a tiny bit profound. Just watch me.

Fortunately there are still several years of house arrest under lockdown to accomplish this.

New Year Resolution part 1 - Drawing

bathroom fish - pen drawing

Besides the usual knee-jerk eat better, get fit, call your mother more often (all of which I am doing quite successfully so far) I have resolved to do an observational drawing every day. In a shiny new sketchbook. It doesn't seem very much, for an artist, yet surprisingly difficult to keep up when you are thinking "I spent all day drawing animated fish, now I have to do a flippin still life?" and when dark evenings mean drawing indoor things (yes I could draw in the mornings, but that's when Im now going running!) and you suddenly realise how much you want to explore the vague and raggedy-edged shapes of the garden, the neighbours' ivy-loaded tree, organic things, instead of hard-edged manufactured objects and square walls. How the cat can sit immobile for 6 hours but begin to prowl when you decide to draw her.
Like the running, it's an exercise - for the drawing muscles. Building up stamina, imaginative capacity, interpretive ability, libraries of sorts of marks. But what begins as a discipline soon becomes a delight. Probably endorphins.

So I finished another film ("Man")

... big news. Not really, but it has already created the need for another film. A follow-on, a deeper exploration of some of the ideas I floated past in this one:
1. the representation of gender and why do we put up with it.
2. the generation of ideas, how and where does it happen.
3. sorts of wooduct-ty marks and how to economically animate them
4. blah blah something to do with the presence of the artist within the work...the self-referential recursive fractal thingummy.
This happens when you have a tiny animation trying to contain several big ideas.
Your head gets full.
Sometimes of fish.