Roughs for new drawing – “UENO”
June 20th, 2009
Here are the roughs for my latest drawing from the “Tokyo Portraits” series. I’ll explain more about the image in the following posts. As usual, my design process starts with walks and thoughts recorded onto a dictaphone as I walk our dog Max. Walking is really furtile territory for me and as usual ideas come whilst strolling along and rarely ever in the studio which is why I always carry a camera and dictaphone because I’ve normally forgotten ideas by the time I get back.
I then start writing down words and justifying everything over a period of weeks and months whilst I am working on other paintings and drawings, just thinking about it really – what is the picture actually about? I see this as the fermentation or gestation period and if an idea still seems good a few months later then I’ll go for it.
Previously I’ve done roughs in the traditional way with pencil and paper and then squared them up which also works perfectly well ( see my website for examples). More recently I’ve been using a simple photoshop programme which is fantastic for juxtaposition and working out scale and spacial areas before I go head first int the image. It can be quite time consuming for me because I’m a bit slow on the uptake with computers and the procedure is very repetitive but it’s worth while , though I’m sure others would say it saps the spontenaety out of a painting.
Here are a few examples , just click on them to enlarge.