2020 is getting shittier and shittier as it goes on... and when Bojo announced the second lockdown date, I decided that it was time for me to pack my bags and return back home to Wales...However, since Wales was in it's Fire Break Lockdown, which would have been lifted after the lockdown in England started, I had to sneak across the border like a fugitive. Absolutely bricking it, I thought I'd be facing the Welsh police, questioned, interrogated, refused entry, however I made it, I avoided all that with pure skill and unimaginable stealth, they still haven't found me and they never will... They'll release a film about me soon, starring Mark Drakeford (First Minister of Wales) and me. They've already started filming the title sequence:

I am of course talking out of my arse... I got on the train and entered Wales and got home, no questions asked, which was slightly concerning really but there we are, I'm not complaining. 

So, when this brief hit I panicked slightly because I'm not living the lockdown life, I'm living the Welsh freedom life, and by that I mean I can have a pint of San Miguel in the pub before 10pm. So I'm faced with two ideas for my lockdown diary, I could make an account of the fact that I am not living in a lockdown right now and all my classmates are (however everything is still strange and far from normal here). Or I could make an account of the first lockdown we had, which turned out to be an absolute emotional breakdown shit fest and without getting into too much detail, is something that I'd perhaps find too difficult to work on. 2020 is really hitting us with these weird and messed up dramas

For my lockown diary, at first I thought that I didn't necessarily want to create a comic style kinda thing, I wanted to go more along the line of an illustrated story, not too dissimilar to a children's picture book style...perhaps edging on a zine-like format? I know that text is something that will play an important part in my lockdown diary regardless and is something that will bring the series of images together into one 'piece'. 

However, after thinking about it, I decided that using a comic grid format along with just a full page of work for some pages, would help the diary become one coherent story.
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Here's some stuff that I looked at before beginning the project: ​

I quite like the idea of creating multiple pieces of collage, using different kinds of paper and materials to create my diary. I like collecting different scraps of paper, whether it be receipts, wrapping paper, or patterned paper bought from the shop, I like to experiment with them and play about with different possible compositions. 

After some feedback from Tony, I decided to have a political element in my diary. When the first lockdown happened, I would constantly be checking the news for updates and I became rather obsessive over it. I don't check it as much now, since it became depressing hearing the same old negativity. Therefore I decided to make an account of me trying to make sense of everything that was going on and of what was being said by the politicians. ​

Please click HERE for my inspirations page for both modules. Here I talk about my influences as well as give examples of work that has inspired me. 

Perspective has always been a difficult one for me to get my head around. Before the task I looked at a lot of examples and copied a lot of diagrams in order to get my head around it all.

I find that I struggle with practicing perspective because it frustrates me. For some reason I struggle to get my head around it all and this frustrates me, and because of this I start to avoid it in order to avoid the feeling of frustration. Now this is a very silly way to be, because if I avoid it, I won't get better at it but sometimes it really disheartens me when I keep getting it wrong and fail to understand it. 

Stupidly, I have left my digital drawing tablet in Carlisle and can't go back to get it because of the lockdown restrictions. I wanted to practice my shading and accuracy with drawing objects such as bottles and cans. Here are some rather crude and cack handed examples of what I'd practiced, they would have been a lot better if I had my tablet. 

I've always enjoyed portraiture. People fascinate me and I love trying to capture their features in my drawings. I've always found it useful to use a grid method whenever I'm drawing faces as it helps for a more accurate piece of work. I use my light-box for the grid to save me drawing it and then having to erase it on my finished piece. 

Wild life drawing, not to be confused with wildlife drawing (as in tigers and exotic things like that) I actually got quite excited for this brief, as I really enjoy drawing people. I think this will be a great challenge to help improve my skills in 'life drawing' as I usually work comfortably from photographs; it's a lot harder when your subject moves! 

As always, here's a Pinterest board with some pieces that have caught my eye. 

For this task I had planned on going into the city center to draw people, but unfortunately, the Rona has hit our household thus meaning I've had to isolate for the past week. It's pretty boring, I'm feeling pretty shitty and work is a bit of a struggle right now...I've had to force myself to create things which is a shame because I was genuinely looking forward for this brief. 

However, all hope is not lost! I'm a big fan of watching live music, I kinda miss going to gigs and the atmosphere that comes with being in a massive arena watching your favourite singer/band. So I watch a lot of live performances on YouTube and suddenly the idea came to me...Why not draw the people in the videos I'm watching!? So, that's what I've done so far...I appreciate it's not the best work, they're quite messy and scribble like but I wanted to challenge myself with fast paced drawing, e.g. giving myself 3 minutes to draw a specific 'frame' of the video. 

I think it's worked OK, again I'm not overly thrilled with the outcome, but it's a starting point and has given me the feel for fast paced drawing of people in different settings. This week has been a bit of a struggle, but I'm glad I've managed to produce a few pieces to get me started. ​

This is the first video I watched. I absolutely adore David Byrne, I think he's an absolute genius and I love his eccentricity (might have a very small crush on him)   One of my biggest regrets of last year was not going to see him live, I seriously missed out on a great tour, and with Covid-19 and all it's shenanigans, I don't see myself being able to go to a gig anytime soon...However, we're rambling again!! 

If you like David Byrne,  then you'll know that he does some weird dancing (if you can call it that) so that was great for me as I had a range of different poses to pick and chose from for my drawing. However, my favourite bit in that video is at the end where they're all sat around the table with their palms flat on the surface, before sliding them in to the center. It's slightly ominous, I don't really understand what's going on, but that's what makes it so great and I think that it was a great 'scene' to try and draw.

I gave myself, probably just under 10 minutes for this one. I tried the technique where I don't lift the pen up from the paper. I can see now that it's gotten a bit messy, and a bit too scribbly, but the idea behind these isn't to be perfect, but to create quick drawings to get a feel for things. 

Second video, is actually a video I've just recently discovered. I found this the other night as I was  having a good old look through the depths of my YouTube recommendations. I really like this band, I only discovered them last year, they've got some great songs and they're slightly eccentric too (there's a theme going on here, isn't there?) 

This time I gave myself approximately 3 minutes to complete a drawing, I found these rather difficult as I'm pretty rubbish at drawing instruments accurately (and I've decided to draw from live music videos, I know.) However, I got a few in, and they're slightly less scribbly than the first drawing. Also I tried using a dip pen, and it left a big splodge of ink on my page, so I resorted back to the trusty fine liner for these, and brushed in a bit of black ink into the background for some depth. 

Video three, and my eyes are stinging and a bit blurry...but we soldier on.

I love Florence, I think she's amazing. There's something so ethereal about her, I often think she's something out of a renaissance painting. I've been fortunate enough to see her live twice now, I love how she twirls and dances about on the stage, so obviously I had to draw her as there's so many different poses to chose from when it comes to her.

I spent a little more time on this one, than the previous few, I didn't want it to be as 'messy' or 'scribbly' as the others. However, I can see that the marks have been rushed in some areas but it was the one I enjoyed doing the most. Again, I added a brush of black ink into the background with the idea of trying to add more depth to the drawing, however I think I might have gone a bit overboard with the ink...it adds something to it though (hopefully!) I prefer it with, rather than without! 

I've always been a big fan of the work that falls under Urban Sketching. I like how the pieces are different, some create detailed realistic drawings, whilst others create quick, almost scribble like drawings. Some use bold colours, others keep it simple with black and white, I just like the range of variety that comes with it...And as someone who isn't very good at drawing buildings, I've always admired the people who seem to effortlessly succeed in creating these drawings. 

However this week, I venture into the world of Urban sketching, and face the challenges of perspective and complicated buildings, with stairs *arghhh* and other complicated things that'll no doubt make me very frustrated. I think it'll be a challenge, but a challenge I'll enjoy! 

We were given an hour during the lecture to go draw. I decided to draw the view from outside my window as it's quite an interesting view from a drawing point of view. Also Phoebe was in the garden drawing so I had to include her in there. I enjoyed this task, it got me ready for the brief. 

This was fun, also way out of my comfort zone, but a great challenge. We also witnessed a drug deal... pretty exciting all round. 

A very old pidgeon, perched on the window. I called him Mr Pidge. 

These are the colourful houses in Beaumaris, it's not quite Balamory... but it gives off Balamory vibes. I drove past these nearly everyday on the way to work. I was sick of the sight of them towards the end...so I obviously had to draw them.

This week we've been given the task of looking on how to apply black ink on paper in order to create images. Black ink on paper is a staple of illustration, effective in it's ability to create a range of different mark making (if you know how to!) 

I've been looking at some inspiration or should I say Pinspiration on Pinterest... I've also found some artists on Instagram that create images using this method. Here's a taster of what I've been looking at (clicking on the images will take you to the artist website/ social media page) : 

I absolutely love Moir's work. It's very quirky, very odd...but that's what makes it so appealing to me! I've been a massive fan of Vic and Bob for a long time now, so when I found out that Vic (Jim Moir) also did art...I got very excited! His art matches his surreal like comedy and eccentricity. He's definitely one of my all time favourite artists. 

Also below you'll see work from David Shrigley. Another artist I love. I'm just a fan of the eccentricity and the dry humor.  Again, another one of my all time favourite artists, I have many Shrigley prints and pieces around my room. 

Bedwyr Williams (Welsh artist!)  is another I really like, I enjoy his satirical and sarcastic wit. I was fortunate enough to see a talk by Bedwyr Williams back in my foundation year, (he was also a previous foundation student at Coleg Menai) it was very inspiring and it was great to be introduced to his work. I like his simple ink drawings, usually made by whatever words he decides to put on there. He also makes short films, they're worth a watch if you like feeling like you're tripping acid... Here's one he did that made me laugh very hard during lockdown. He made a series of these, but here's one for your viewing enjoyment: 

Anyway, slightly off topic with the pen and ink techniques, but this was too good not to include!

Here's some more work that I've been looking at, including Tom Gauld ( I found his book on my shelf, which belongs to the library and I've had it since lockdown and the inner librarian in me is screaming...however there has been a Global Pandemic so that's the only reason I've had it so long!!) â€‹So throughout the week, I've sought inspiration from other artists (as always) and sat down and forced myself to start working. After a long 6 months of lockdown, I've struggled to get back into the positive mindset of wanting to create again. However, I found that it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be and I managed to produce some work. Is it the best work? No... Am I getting into that work mindset again? Slowly but surely!

The few drawings I've produced and the inspiration from other artist's work has given me the inspiration to start drawing again, something I found very difficult to do during lockdown, I just wasn't in a very positive frame of mind, and picking up a pen or a pencil was something that became increasingly more and more difficult as the months went by (dramatic, I know...but true!)  However, I'm getting back to it now, and it's pretty good to be back. â€‹

I've also been looking at and practicing a lot of mark making: â€‹

And here are some random drawings that I've produced over the week:

I did a drawing of the sink, because I thought since being in university, the only thing I seem to do is wash dishes. Even though in our new house we've been given a dishwasher, I still seem to be washing dishes in the sink, every minute, every day...Dishes everywhere. Part of me thinks I should just get paper plates and then finally I'd be free from the menial task that is washing dishes...but no, I'm not that lazy. That writing you see, probably doesn't make sense to you...but it translates to, "Washing the dishes every fucking minute" because that's literally all I do. 

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook. This is where I was just practicing with the pen and ink, and trying to get a feel for the medium.