A 2 minute piece of footage of musician and composer Warren Ellis playing the violin got me obsessed.
I kept hitting play again and again and drawing and drawing and not pausing.
Other videos of violin players didn’t have the same excitement. They were a bit static. Warren Ellis moves all the time and is quite bendy which is exciting to draw with the moving bendy lines I love to make.
Ikea kids paper is cheap and it keeps rolling out. I used Crayola crayons because they smell of childhood. It’s impossible to get wound up when drawing feels like it did when I was five.
I worked on the floor where the paper can keep going and the crayon can dance over the surface, picking up wood and carpet textures.
Next - how to take something with energy and movement and remove even more control?
Monoprints!
I’m not a printmaker. I don’t know all the ins and outs of monoprinting. I decided to stick with my ignorance and enthusiasm. No researching, just go for it!
Back in the late 90s I saw Tracey Emin on telly doing some mono print life drawing so I kept that in the back of my mind and went for it.
This got obsessive too.
Peeling each paper off the inky glass was pure adrenaline - I’ve nearly got it! Do it again, do it again! The next one will be perfect!
Look how much the quality of line changes from the pencil on the back to the monoprint! Of course the image is reversed but that doesn’t matter.
The surprising textures and that crazy line and having to hold my hand awkwardly so I don’t squash the paper - all of it made an out of control process that I couldn’t stop.
Does this have anything to do with illustrating children’s books? No, not really. But also - yes, everything!
I don’t know how to harness that lovely line I found. Or how to bring any colour to an image made this way.
But the thrill of being a beginner and being surprised by how each image came out is the best feeling.
And that feeling is essential for me to make interesting work.
Here’s the clip that set me off.
What have you been obsessed with lately? I’d love to hear about it, the more niche the better!
Links:
This post from Ella Beech about following the work was really helpful.
A fairly recent interview with Warren Ellis in The Guardian. He mentions when he plays the violin “The chatter stops and everything stops and I just feel at one with something.” And also about watching TV with Marianne Faithfull.
The moon prints are a delight! Maybe Kandinsky really was onto something when he drew to music!
Amazing! I love the movement visible in the pictures of multiple pieces of your work, and how the writing mirrored the drawings’ frenetic qualities. 💛