Birds

Another New Studio

Two Crows November 25

One of the joys of the garden are the birds that I feed each day. I regularly see fifteen to twenty Pigeons, they gather on the neighbouring chimneys waiting for me to bring the food to the bird table at eight thirty each morning. While they are there, and before and after their arrival and departure, the smaller birds mill around the table, Hedge Sparrows and House Sparrows, Blue Tits and Great Tits. Occasionally a Black Cap or a Green Finch will appear and very rarely a Woodpecker or a pair of Parakeets. The garden will be full of Blackbirds from early morning until lunchtime and again from around three thirty as the sun begins to set. Magpies and Crows visit throughout the day, the Magpies chasing the Pigeons from the table and bullying anything they can see. There are at least three Robins that live at the top of garden near the house. If I venture up the garden I see all these and Long Tailed Tits alongside the charm of Goldfinches that fly up and down the gardens on this side of the street.

I have a feeling that I’m supposed to look for meaning in the things that move me and through that understanding develop a direction but I find myself continually thinking about the work having no meaning. Simply being.

Jackdaw November 25

Is it even possible to make something without meaning or purpose? Immediately I know that people will scoff at this, the world is full of stuff with neither meaning nor purpose! I suspect the truth is that some things lack either meaning or purpose but rarely, if ever, both. I don’t even know if this is what I mean. What I do is continually seek to limit the amount of editing I allow myself when I draw or build, I’m always looking for the minimal amount of me in any work. I am aware that editing is the activity I’m engaged in as an artist.

So I started drawing birds in November when preparing for the open day. I started with the Crows, the Gulls and the Jackdaw and went for the 1mtr square format to fit frames I already had. I made the support using three sheets of A1 cartridge paper stuck together with wallpaper paste and for these first drawings left unstretched. The surface afforded the quality of the air and be random enough to remain an active part of the drawing.

Gulls November 25

‘Scattering’ November 25

Pigeons Nov 25

I moved onto the big drawings at the same time, these were made at the same time as the sculpture ‘The difference between Birds and Trees’ and I used the leaf print to make the backgrounds before I drew on them. The pigeons references Milton Avery’s pigeons in Paris . The geese seemed appropriate for the time of year and the idea of the wind blowing the leaves.

Crows in Flight 1 November 25

Crows in Flight 2 November 25

These were accompanied by a few sketches of individual birds, loosely Crows in flight.

‘The difference between trees and birds’ Nov 25

Crows in Flight (maquette) November 25

The sculptural works were made to explore the idea of representing flight without being tied to making literal birds.

‘A Murder’ November 25

I also made a big drawing of a rookery, we pass one by the dual carriageway on the way to the pub.

‘More Pigeons’ December 25

The drawings are develop during any hiatus encountered when I hit a bump in the road. I might be thinking about where its all going or distracted by other considerations. In December I was greatly perturbed by the CAA Crit Programme  I did with David Risley that threw me completely askew.

‘Three Crows, or is it Rooks’ December 25

The Three Crows were drawn while I was working on the ‘woolgathering’ VR piece that I have worked to a point where it needs to rest. There is a walkthrough video of the entire piece here and the executable file can be downloaded for PCVR here

I made a twine story to try to explain the VR.

‘Two Pigeons’ December 25

The pigeons were drawn because I felt I needed to look more closely at them when I stopped working on the 1m sq drawing and Christmas was almost upon us.

‘Pigeon’ December 25

‘Geese in Flight’ December 25

The second Geese drawing was made during the open days at the end of November as I had a big paper stretched and drawing is an activity that it’s easier to step in and out of.

‘Crows in Flight’ (maquette)

While I was away from the studio I made some small models of ideas for birds in my attic and then took them to the studio to develop.

‘Crows in Flight’ (maquette) December 25

They are very difficult to scan as they’re shiny black so I got some interesting versions for modelling.

These two were relatively accurate. I tried Polycam’s [LINK] new AI 3d scanning which takes a single image and generates a 3d form.

The forms you get are interesting and give opportunities for more interesting takes on flight than the first models so I’ve made them into STL files for 3d printing.

‘Crow’ January 26

The big single crow has been on the board throughout December and I consider it abandoned rather than finished.

‘Scaffold’ WIP

I want to build a kind of woodland, reflective of the ‘murder’ drawing earlier in this piece, and this is the first step towards that. There will be flight forms atop the ‘twigs’ at the top of the piece.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The December drawings can be seen here

…and the November 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.