Tag Archives: dead-ends

The Burial of the Dead

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The Burial of the Dead

Another New Studio

‘April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.’

TS Eliot: The Waste Land 

April has been a great big steaming waste of time. Everything I’ve tried has turned out badly and in the end I’ve had to put everything away and start again. I ended the month reading an article online that takes a very jaundiced view of the art school in the UK and is extremely difficult to argue with. 

d’Alancaisez, Pierre. ‘Art School Hotel California’. Elementy, no. 6 (2024). https://doi.org/10.52652/e.6.24.12.

The succession of photographs that follow present a view of my efforts over the month to prove to myself that I was active even though the evidence will be destroyed.

Horse Parts Template 04 April 2025

I drew out the parts on insulation foam

Horse Parts Cut Out 04 April 2025

Cut them out

Leg Parts Bandaged 09 April 2025

Wrapped them in plaster bandage – the mummification never mind the burial of the dead

Horse Body Bandaged 11 April 2025

Assembled the body, the problem is becoming more apparent I think

Horse Parts Positioned 14 April 2025

Positioned the parts, held them together with steel rod

Horse Parts Assembly 16 April 2025

Bandaged them again to hold the legas together as individual units

The burial of the dead

Horse Parts Head 18 April 2025

I’d already made the head and tail. Watched the whole piece fall apart because the joints won’t hold

Horse Parts Fixings 21 April 2025

Strengthened the joints so I could tighten them together

Horse Parts Connections 23 April 2025

Assembled the horse again and watched it collapse.

Horse Legs Remade 25 April 2025

Decided to join the two legs from each side of the horse together to see if I could build it differently

Horse legs abandoned 28 April 2025

Stopped flogging the dead horse when this failed, tidied the studio, reorganised so I could reach the blue foam.

The month wasn’t a total waste, I did this drawing at the satart of the month,

Mare and Foal 02 April 2025

and I made a small version of the horse to illustrate what I’m aiming for.

The Burial of the Dead

Circus Horse (after Seurat) 02 May 2025

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The April drawings can be seen here

  • Draw Every Day – April 25
    Draw Every Day – April 25
    Draw Every Day - April 25 Continuing to draw every day in Fabriano artist's Journal with ...
    See photo »

…and the March images here

Draw Every Day - March 25 Continuing to draw every day in Fabriano artist's Journal with coloured pages. On the 25th December I received a set of coloured brush pens from my wife and have used them since. The drawings are made any time from 9:00 am at the breakfast table and occasionally later in the day if I'm away from home. The drawings have been posted since the beginning, 6th May 2020, on instagram https://www.instagram.com/latham_1959 You can see previous months through the galleries page https://www.ian-latham.com/blog/galleries or you can go straight to  February's drawings here -
  • Draw Every Day – February 25
    Draw Every Day – February 25
    Draw Every Day - February 25 Continuing to draw every day in Fabriano artist's Journal with ...
    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.

Wading Through Mud

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Wading Through Mud

(Another New Studio)

This has been a busy couple of weeks since my last post (link to post) with work on the NHS Barnsley project which is progressing but will be the subject of another post when it’s completed.

Distractions aside I continued to work on the large drawing I’d started but didn’t post last time out.

Wading Through Mud

Large Rose 11/08/23

Then (11th August) it looked like this, there evidence of some changes in the centre at the bottom but it doesn’t work, too structured and neither one thing nor the other.

WAding Through Mud

Large Rose 14/08/23

So I decided it needed some stronger blogs at the top right and some on the left and below to draw it together. This is the state of play on 14th August.

Wading Through Mud

Large Rose 18/08/23

I decided to move everything up a bit and strengthen the overall force of the circular composition. This is after the 18th August.

Wading Through Mud

Large Rose 25/08/23

I needed to think about it for a while and I worked on the UKSPF project while I did that but felt like it had no presence so I attacked it with white paint and this is what it looks like on the 25th August. It hasn’t changed since but illustrates how you can work your arse off and things will still go wrong.

So I’ve left that for a while, who knows how long, Howard Hodgkin  used to turn his paintings to the wall for two or more years so I’m not going to be in any hurry.

I have a desire to get much simpler with the physical work – I’m also trying to get back to the world building in VR – so I started to work on a new drawing of apples I have in the studio. I see this as part of a sketchbook with AR elements that will include the birdsnest, and drawings of my Doc Martens and the garden at Tickhill Road.

Wading Through Mud

Two Apples 29/08/23

The first drawing is just the apples on a sheet of white paper and I thought it interesting how the colour balance changed when I added the shadowed wall next to the window.

Wading Through Mud

Two Apples 29/08/23

I’ve completed the UKSPF project bar the publication, the images can be seen in this post “Not Building”  the video is a quick run through of how it works. I might reduce the size of the videos as much as I can.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The August drawings can be seen here

  • Draw Every Day – August 23
    Draw Every Day – August 23
    Draw Every Day - August 23 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using sketching ...
    See photo »

…and the July images here

  • Draw Every Day – July 23
    Draw Every Day – July 23
    Draw Every Day - July 23 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using sketching ...
    See photo »

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

The drawings are posted to Twitter and Instagram each day.

 

Place Markers, not Milestones

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Guy Debord, The Naked City, 1957

For today, after experiencing some drift myself, I’m putting this here as a placemarker. If you’ve followed the blog you’ll have an idea of what I mean by that as the work I’ve been doing is psychogeographical.

I’m struggling to articulate the work and its underlying theories without establishing a road map and this situationist approach seems to be the most appropriate for now. I’ll post my thoughts when I know what they are.

The image is from McDonough, T 2004, Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, MIT Press, Cambridge. which is sitting on my desk as I write.