Boris is coming …
And behind him, those who would own us
Tag Archives: ipad art
Still life with bedroom furniture
Imminent apocalypse
Found songs
There is an desperate archive of diverse Jewish folk songs, originating across Hitler’s Europe and hidden in Kiev through Stalin’s rule. Here is immediacy, witness, satire and heartbreak. In trenches, soldiers lampoon their oppressors (I learn from the New Yorker article that nearly half a million Jews in the Red Army battled the Nazis, a third of whom died).
I had started this drawing already, riffing on the idea of a stringed instrument, using Zen Brush on the iPad. I added in layers in another programme, Procreate, and by now I was listening to the voice and violin, dances and laments, on the album Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II.
The hand started as the guitarist’s grip but might be seen differently as the fanatic’s grasp.
Holidays
Realisation of Ipad sketch in ink and pastel, on balcony in shade, listening to Spotify classical guitar daily mix.
Crushed
Crackle, crackle, crackle
Slothful weekend
My son states that not one of my attempts to draw him actually look like him. He thinks I should simply draw cartoon sloths because they have a similar hair style to him, and seem to be always smiling, like him.
It seems a harsh criticism because he does not stay still long enough to allow me to draw. Here, he is attempting to control a column of air wound round in a brass tube such that there is an interval between the emerging tones and a gap between the notes. This challenge keeps him in the same spot and doing the same thing for a few minutes.
My oldest son sent these youngest a book of ideas for building from Lego. They dragged the crate of accumulated pieces into the living room and I realised I had five minutes to draw while they constructed.
Even then, it is remarkable how lively they were, gyrating through different positions on the floor while preoccupied with their task. Quickly this descended into a chase across the furniture as their constructs were caught up in a narrative.
In the picture below, he has perched on the stairs to read the Lego book. I draw from under the table tennis table in the hall. Perhaps the odd angle explains why I gave him puny forelimbs like a Tyrannosaurus.
The play park in the cold is an inauspicious setting to draw. Here, he perched for a minute on a high log. There is something missing from this sketch … I think it is half his leg.
One trick is to do a deal. I drew her in return for her drawing me.
She needs to talk about a talent in class next week. Her original plan was to play the ukulele. I was a bit sceptical: initial enthusiasm a year ago quickly faded when pressing the strings hurt her fingers. She thinks I could teach her enough in the next 5 days. Her faith in me is touching but misplaced. My playing is limited to messing around, mostly in a G minor harmonic scale with a drone on the low G hit by my thumb, fantasising I am Ravi Shankar.
She has a better chance with drawing. Given a spare moment she draws. So I gave her a pad with decent cartridge paper and a 4B pencil. She was willing to listen to my explaining about 3D shapes and shadows because she has five days before presenting this talent, which is pressing a little on her mind. If she allows, I will post her drawings soon.
Today, we did an experiment. Could a sloth lie on its back in the water with all four paws vertically upright allowing a sail to be hoisted? We think the answer is no. We sank.
punched metal
In the experimental drawing workshops, we worked on two pieces in parallel. The first started as straight non-overlapping lines in charcoal and was posted as “Wildcode“. The second was built from curved lines, always reserving an area of paper free of carbon stains. This was then stored on a rack. When I looked at it a week later, it had acquired an imprint of a piece of metal that was more interesting than the original drawing. I built on that in charcoal layers, then throwing white gouache at it. This is fixed and photographed. I have cropped and tinted the image using Artrage on the iPad.
Punched metal.
Sinfonietta to Fleshquartet
Landscape with gun
I listened to Janacek’s sinfonietta on the radio. The anchor commented that two different recordings of the same music provide the soundtrack to Murakami’s novel, 1Q84. I downloaded the music, and the book. Janacek’s sinfonietta marks the boundary between the real and unreal, the profane and sacred.
Around the same time, I listened to a learned discussion on the writing of Anton Chekhov. In 1890, the ill young man made a three month journey from Moscow across Siberia to the penal colony of Sakhalin Island. After listening, I have begun to work my way through his stories. As it turned out, Chekhov’s narrative power is another thread running through the tapestry of 1Q84
According to Chekhov, says a character in 1Q84, once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired.
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