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

…and the April images here

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.

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