Simon's Blog

> > Of course that is a very subject question but as I write this it has just turned midnight from Thursday to friday and I wonder that week has gone. I have spent most of it hunched in front of a computer screen or doing field trips to find evidence for medieval salt roads. I find it very absorbing but it doesn’t have eat up your day. Perhaps the most creative thing I have done this week is spend a really enjoyable 2 hours at the life drawing class on Monday – was that really Monday?
> > So as the new day starts I though I would just run off a quick sketch of a hare for no other reason than I want and I can think of no better way to relax than this.
> > So what about the rest of Friday – what will that hold. Well as I write I suspect more hours at the computer working on salt roads, I have had a bit of a break through this week and am now an expert of sorts on the location of the Leicesterford Bridge and its relationship with Lord Harborough’s loop. Now there are two things rarely seen in the same sentence. I might even get round to posting the drawings from the life drawing – perhaps. >

> > > > Sent from my iPad

Of course that is a very subject question but as I write this it has just turned midnight from Thursday to friday and I wonder that week has gone. I have spent most of it hunched in front of a computer screen or doing field trips to find evidence for medieval salt roads. I find it very absorbing but it doesn’t have eat up your day. Perhaps the most creative thing I have done this week is spend a really enjoyable 2 hours at the life drawing class on Monday – was that really Monday?

So as the new day starts I though I would just run off a quick sketch of a hare for no other reason than I want and I can think of no better way to relax than this.

So what about the rest of Friday – what will that hold. Well as I write I suspect more hours at the computer working on salt roads, I have had a bit of a break through this week and am now an expert of sorts on the location of the Leicesterford Bridge and its relationship with Lord Harborough’s loop. Now there are two things rarely seen in the same sentence. I might even get round to posting the drawings from the life drawing – perhaps.

Sent from my iPad

You just don’t realise how big these things are until you see great video like this.

http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10/15/time-lapse-video-space-shuttle-endeav…

Sent from my iPad

Off to a life drawing class this evening so I’ve just made this as a warm up.

Sent from my iPad

One of the most crushing things that can ever happen to an artist happened to me this morning. I made the Bond likeness the previous evening and my wife had not seen it. So I showed it to her and she said “…great, who is it?…” I felt my whole world deflate at that moment. I am not ashamed to say I had a real artistic strop and walked off in a huff. After coming down from own hill of indignation I then found out that my wife had never seen any of the Sean Connery Bond movies and only knew Connery from his later work such as Hunt for Red October. So perhaps my deflation was slightly overcome.

But it did get me to think a little about what a likeness is and how we each have a mental image against which we judge these things. With this in mind I made the Steve Jobs likeness this evening. Whilst I was looking at Jobs’ many images on an my iPad, somewhat appropriate I thought , I came to realise how, while his face has changed over time, the one thing that always seem to be the same where his eyes which seemed to be brimming with life right to his last product launch not long before his death. For sometime now I have been concentrating only on the eyes and mouth ratio as the basis for any likeness and then let the brain do the rest of the work. Sometimes it works sometime it doesn’t but looking at Jobs I have come to realise you also have to try and capture the anima of the person – no small task. – Now if I’m honest I don’t think I managed that with the Connery – so perhaps my wife was right in asking – Who is it?

Sent from my iPad

I’m becoming more interested in the negative space or the dark shady areas of an image. This was an attempt just to create an image by the negative space – hardly a new experiment but one which I have started to appreciate.

Sent from my iPad