I've updated my portfolio site with photos of the ten-metre drawing. so..uh... ignore the link in my post from the other day. these pictures are clearer and more plentiful, and show you much more of the drawing. clicky. i'd go and delete the other post but the picture looks pretty and i can't be bothered to mess about with it.

when things go wrong, i have a nasty habit of spending unwise amounts of cash on dvds. this week i came home with 6 new ones, including michaelangelo antonioni's blow up. it really is one of the most beautiful films i've ever watched. i love how nothing is neatly filed away and explained, clichéd-hollywood-stylee, yet the last scene, even just in the way that it's filmed, quietly and subtly demystifies everything, and yet leaves you with a thousand new questions.

it makes me look forward immensely to getting into photography properly this year. i've experimented for a while, and used a darkroom for the first time last year, but this year i want to really get into it.

xxx  ¶ 8:38 PM 4 comments

  Finally finished! I finally finished the damn 10-metre thing. 10 metres of white and black and magenta chalk. 3 months, a ruined carpet, awful amounts of late night tv and cabin fever, a newly developed allergy to chalk [sweet irony...] and finally, a finished drawing. I'd love to post a photo of the whole thing, but I haven't even seen it myself yet - there isn't space to roll the whole thing out. I've taken photos of the last 5 metres though.



The rest of the photos [haven't the energy to fanny about with linking them here, it's 7am now, I finished it an hour ago and I'm exhausted - I need to sleep!] are on my LJ.

xxx  ¶ 6:46 AM 0 comments

  it's a streetfight, it's a friday night alone last night i went to see trail of dead. i guess it's about the 5th or 6th time i've seen them - and by far the best. it was amazing to see them somewhere like ulu, which is basically the most intimate place i've seen them play.

and here are some photos. there are about 20, click the photo below to see them.





i like that one, and there's one of the traditional trail of dead stage-trashing that i like a lot:





it was a beautiful but painful gig - i had a photopass so i was allowed to take photos from the pit at the start, but frankly most of my photos from there were worthless - all i could get was the underside of their chins.

after my three songs were up, i scrambled up the stairs left of the stage and squeezed between the big speakers and the railing in front of them - letting me lean right over the stage and pick up some of the action. the downside of this was that for about 40 minutes my ears were never more than an inch away from the speakers. leaving me with the worst tinnitus i've ever had [and i've done some pretty stupid things where speakers and loud gigs are concerned].

the pain last night at least was mollified by a generous quantity of vodka after the show, meeting two of my heroes (trail of dead singer conrad, and a writer whose work i've admired for a very long time), and the satisfaction at getting some shots i really liked. the whole day at work today though was farcical - try dealing with the general public when you can't even hear them, not to mention the hangover...

xxx
  ¶ 1:18 AM 0 comments

  we want the airwaves back i feel like i have a better idea where the ten-metre drawing's going now. it started as very scrawled, right-brain, movement-concentrated drawings, which evolved into quite crazy, chaotic imagery.. the stage i'm on at the moment is started to get more purist, more traditional i guess. as it develops it's going to move much more towards photorealism [i.e. it'll be fucking hard, but worth it], and eventually into an actual photograph.

i want to present it like an enormous segment of a roll of film, dividing the space up into spaces where the cells would be... and the final three cells will be a negative image [like you get on processed film], an actual photograph blown up, and then a final image [maybe photographic, maybe drawn] of an empty stage, a lone mic stand in the foreground, lit by one spotlight. the whole drawing will be covered with a film of acetate, to give it the sheen that a film roll has, and it'll have those black square-hole-punched sides that film has.

here's what i've done so far anyway. it looks odd and segmented because due to its ridiculous length [and so far it's only at 4.3 metres..... christ] i had to take several photos and splice them together. click the image to see it larger..



xxx  ¶ 2:32 PM 0 comments

  this art amazes me.

xxx  ¶ 9:48 PM 0 comments

  after an absolutely pointless day yesterday in which all my attempts at screenprinting were thwarted by bloody computers, i tried to salvage the day. i went on another photography mission around the docklands, starting at around sunset and photographing as it got darker.


i was in a bit of a silly mood and took photos that looked like the buildings were taking off for sunnier climes. it wasn't exactly intentional but i'm happy with the photos. there are some more serious ones in there too, but they aren't my favourites.



we have lift off...

xxx
  ¶ 9:25 PM 0 comments

  one of the most upsetting things is losing a sketchbook. i know that sounds terribly self-absorbed, but it really is upsetting.

for about two or three years, from 2000 onwards, i kept a sketchbook full of portraiture. it was very music-based and comprised mainly of intensely detail-heavy pencil drawings of my favourite bands onstage, usually from photographs (have you tried standing in front of a stage with a sketchpad? i have, and it's bloody hard, and usually fruitless). there were also a few portraits of people i cared a lot about (boyfriends or friends etc). some of those drawings are online, but the more recent, and better ones, aren't, sadly.

i'd almost completely forgotten about that sketchbook until this evening. on juno doran's site, she was talking about "a painting as redemption of an image [or] a memory", and it started me i thinking about a drawing i did of someone who made perhaps the strongest and most instant impression on me that anyone ever has. in the space of a week he blew my mind. i draw for all sorts of reasons, but this time it was deeply cathartic. it was an A4 pencil drawing that i started in january 2003 and took me three months to finish. by the time i finished it, i'd actually gotten over him. (i saw him again a couple of weeks ago, and much as i thought/worried that old feelings might surface, it seems that drawing really did its job.)

i'd love to upload the drawing onto my art site, as it's one of the pieces i'm more proud of than anything; it's just a drawing but it's more personal than anything i've ever done, i wanted it to be a perfect photographic representation, and after three months of frustration, sweat and tears, it finally did.

i lost that sketchbook over a year ago though. i brought it along to my foundation interview in summer 2003, and it disappeared shortly after that, i've not seen it since. it was a visual journal for me of sorts, so it rather feels like i've lost a record of three years. i have three or four sketchbooks on the go now, and none of them mean as much to me as that one did.

xxx
  ¶ 6:40 PM 1 comments