RESTLESS ENERGY, SPEEDY SKETCHES AND RISK-TAKING
Drawing children is a tough call – they just can’t keep still!	I don’t like to encourage them to watch TV, but occasionally when they do, I’ll make a sketch.	With this one I reckon on about 5 seconds before some pretty big deal shift ...
...of an arm or leg — or the whole lot — (I’ve timed it) which is why I have so few of her.	Often they’ll move and then after a while, come back to the same position. But like as not they’ll just get up and...GO!	You need to be quick. One way is to use the ‘blind contour’ or ‘eyes-off’ method. (Rodin was a great exponent of this.)
So you look at the subject and draw without looking at the paper. With practise, you can — by trailing your little finger on the paper and using it as a kind of pantograph — tell how far your hand is travelling. Sure you get a few lines in the wrong place...		...but more often than not you’ll capture the spirit with a fluidity that you could not by drawing conventionally. It’s exciting!
In the end you have to look and that’s when you can make a few adjustments. But I don’t like to erase lines (not that you can with ink).	I prefer to keep going with what’s in front of me — even if it’s a little inconsistent with what’s gone earlier.	Somehow it seems more sincere, even if — as is often the case —it leads to a slightly weird outcome. But there’s good weird and bad weird!
I suppose I’m hoping for something that somehow gives a sense of the passage of time. And by doing so, turning what is a frustrating activity, into a creative one.	After all, if you want a photographic likeness, you might as well take a photo. I believe drawing should be risky – I mean the consequences of failing aren’t in the same ballpark as a pilot, surgical or mountaineering error. So I’d hope that by drawing on the edge, there’s just a chance of creating something with a peculiar and fragile beauty.
I find it helpful to spend periods using only monochrome (Indian ink, say), or a little bit of greyscale (pencil, say) – as a kind of discipline. (Though monochrome is fab in its own right.)	Then when you do come to use colour it’s a bit like ‘taking off the handbrake’ – you colour with real verve. In fact it can be a bit wild – but I don’t mind that.	These quick sketches (again with the challenge of constant movement ever present) were made using felt tip pen washed over waterproof gel pen.
Another way to convey the passage of time is simply to redraw a subject and then compare and contrast. But beware, this can be scary!	I don’t know many people who’ll readily agree to sit for a drawing — unless they’re being paid for it or sitting for a commission. I’m not at all keen.	So these self-portraits were made as a result of the usual necessity — there being no-one else around at the time, which was just as well!
Self-portraits often have an added intensity about the eyes because they necessarily show the subject looking carefully — scrutinizing, even.	This second lot of three ‘warts and all’s were made some twenty-five years later. Think ‘portrait’ and you might think ‘oils’. But I like watercolour.	Its unpredictability makes it hard to control and especially unsuitable for painting ‘live’ (which is what I prefer). It’s unfashionable but exciting!
▲ Rapid sketch of Becky —watercolour over gel pen.	▲ Black crayon sketch of Becky.	▲ Rapid study of Leila. Watercolour over gel pen.
▲ Rapid biro sketch of Sarah.	▲ Sarah smirking —black crayon.	▲ Biro sketch of Hans.
▲ Biro sketch of Mrs Baker dozing off.
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