Procrastination

Posted on June 10, 2026 by iansblog

Bird Vortex

Procrastination was the name of the game during the best part of May and the beginning of June, compounded by the continuing saga of failing hard drives and agonising about the AR works I need to make for the Digitalism section of the British Art Fair in September. I had a CAA Masterclass with Rebekah Tolley and she very kindly asked me to exhibit with the 5th Plinth AR stall.

I made this piece in April and it has some of the feel of the piece I’m going for but is obviously too big as it stands. Additionally I wrote this blog on Monday and it failed to save so I’ve had to write it again.

Starlings May 2026

The piece for the BAF Digitalism section will likely to fire off this image.

The piece is still embryonic and the drawing is probably way too big.

My procrastination led to me thinking about some works I made in 1980 when I was a students and I started some drawings exploring these. The idea at the time was to build the sky and I did this by curving hardboard to make a succession of arches that held paper clouds.

Vault 04/05/2026

Vault 11/05/2026

Vault 15/05/2026

The drawings were this kind of receding tunnel effect with abstract elements animating the spaces.

I also tried a new scan of the garden and recorded it in the space outside the Minster.

Large Flock 25/05/2026

It’s worth making a note of the paper I’ve been using. The drawing above is on brown paper layered with newspaper using wallpaper paste and stretched to a board. The wrikled effect gives me the kind of surface I want for the sky.

I started a set of drawings extracting the individual birds from this drawing

bird sketch 25/05

Bird Sketch 25/05

and in the end poured some blue onto them to make them livelier.

birdsketches 27/05/26

Large Flock 27/05/2026

I followed this by removing two of the bird shapes from the top right and pushing the bottom ‘v’ shape into the background.

Large Flock 01/06/2026

I made some timelapse videos of the drawing process

as I was indulging in procrastination

It reminds me of a process that seems largely intuitive in retrospect.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The May drawings can be seen here

Draw Every Day – May 26

Draw Every Day - May 26 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 29 on 20th May. I've ...
See photo »

…and the April images here

Draw Every Day – April 26

Draw Every Day - April 26 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 28 on 20th March. I've ...
See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

Or you can go the Galleries page on the top menu

The drawings are posted to Instagram each day.

Away with the birds

Posted on May 10, 2026 by iansblog

Away with the birds

Another New Studio

‘a murder’ 10/04/26

In April I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get cloud anchors to work in Meadow and finding a series of issues. Eventually I resorted to using image tracking which I can make work perfectly well. To do what I want with ‘a murder’ is going to take a lot of resolution. I removed the nest from the sculpture and added a series of ‘crosses’ from the earlier bird sculptures.

‘a murder’ (detail) 10/04/26

At the moment these are effectively maquettes, I’ll make them more solid at a later stage. The sculpture will be animated in AR by overlaying each ‘cross bird’ with a twin flying in a limited space above it. A flock will rise from the trees and return on a repeating cycle.

I put a webpage together covering the development of the birds as they’re a significant project now.

‘starlings’ 17/04/26

The other piece that I’m spending time on is ‘starlings’, this was ‘the shapes birds make in the air 11’ but has changed as I remembered some textures I made six years ago and have been contemplating working towards a book that brings the birds together with the garden in the manner of Elisabeth Bletsoe’s ‘Birds of the Sherborne Missal’ The pieces will be centred on observations of each mornings visitors in the garden and have drawings, sculptures and AR/VR works linked from them.

‘the shapes birds make in the air’ 17/04/26

I also found myself frustrated by the messing about with AR and animation in blender as well as troubles with my portable hard drives. I decided to revisit the source and started to draw birds again.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The April drawings can be seen here