Big Bang

This morning, while I was walking the dog, a slow moving green and white Volkswagen Combi van came down the road from the opposite direction.
In the drivers seat was an elderly man.
He was wearing a long grey beard, a brightly coloured scarf in his hair and had a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Next to him, in the passenger seat was (apart from the beard) an almost identical female version of the man, cigarette included.
And as they passed, waving, I saw that slinking its way with some trepidation across the Combi van's dashboard, was an ancient looking Siamese cat.

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Big Bang Volcano Drawing
A5 gel roller ball and stamps on brown paper with a thin coat of white paint on it.

There’s a sign out of the front of a house in the road in Hawaii where I sit drawing this picture.
From where I sit you can’t see it, but it’s made of what looks a sheet of white corrugated tin.
The letters are in red sprayed paint.
The first word is FUCK, but the next word I’m not sure of and there might even be another word in there somewhere, and the last says QUEER.
The text is almost illegible, but the message is clear.
The QUEERS should FUCK off.

It’s a shame, for the gay/queer haters that the gays don’t come from somewhere else, like their own country, that the Gay isn’t a race of its own.
Then they could say -We don’t like your fag ways round here. Take ‘em back to Gayland, where you belong!
Like they say to Muslims.

Or like an English person once said to me when I knocked on his door and asked him for a piece of string to lead a dog home that I had found in the street.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I hate dogs,’
I looked down at this really small, scared dog that I was hanging on to by the collar and then I looked back up at the man and said-
‘But..but…how can you hate ALL dogs?’
And the man said to me-
‘Oh, why don’t you fuck off back to where you came from.’ and shut the door in my face.

Maybe he didn’t like my ‘string wanting’ ways.
………..
This is a pastel drawing.
Approximately A4
I’ve got a hardback black paper-filled book I bought years ago from Habitat and I’m filling it with drawings.

Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes.

Remember being a child and doing something you thought really worthy, exciting, something that made you feel happy, pleased with yourself?
Like a drawing, and then you show it to an adult, or a teacher who proceeds to criticise, belittle and pick fault.
I was reminded of this today.
And then the following came to mind-

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
“He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”

So lets remind ourselves to encourage rather than embarrass, inspire rather than intimidate, delight in rather than dismiss.

And if you can’t say something nice, you can…..(see above photograph)

Today’s good thing was beginning a new drawing.
It’s a different size to what I usually do, but I found a frame with some mount in it so I’m drawing to fit the frame.
Approx 23cm by 58, I’ve asked Facebook friends for their favourite 4 letter words.
Bang
Fuck
Fool
Shit
Word
Good
Muff
Cunt
All the old favourites are there, along with pool and mate, from the lovely Shandy, always thinking laterally.
So, here is bang, as in ‘bang em under’.
The next?
Maybe baby….who knows.
But bang baby has a nice ring!
Bang
Baby
Ring
Nice
See, whenever you open your mouth, a four letter word falls out.

The idea for this drawing leaked out of an earlier work called, You My Friend Are a Four Letter Word And It Is Not Love.

There are some kinds of white that I like.
The white hot sun on white pool steps at midday.
White walls in a bedroom.
All white crockery.
White sheets and white tee shirts.
White shirts.
Cockatoos.
And now I also like powdery white snow.

*This drawing was done in Florida. A4 pastel.

'The shallow recover quickly. You cannot bruise a pillow.'

This is a pastel drawing of a poodle.
I did this a looooong time ago. I cut some eyes from a magazine and glued them over the top of the dogs real eyes.
It’s now for sale for £250 #tonilebusquesbigdoodles #poodle http://instagr.am/p/Q4G4iqONm7/

This is the last video from the drawing, Everyone You Meet Knows Something You Don’t.
Large and colourful, it is.
Have a look on my gallery page and you’ll see it. 

Find the cause, not the cure.
I read that today, somewhere online.

Yesterday I met someone I hadn’t seen for many years.
In a doctors surgery.
She told me that her sister had breast cancer and that she herself now had to have a mammogram.
And also, her other sister needed one.
Because they’re triplets and their mother and grandmother had died of breast cancer.
‘There are three lumps,’ she told me, ‘2 my sister found herself, and one that a scan found,’
I responded by saying something like fuck, that’s awful.
Then we swapped cancer stories while we walked in to town together.
Then she left to cut through the Co op to the post office.
‘I hope you’ve got a packed lunch,’ I said, and we both laughed, knowing how frustratingly long the queue is in the post office.
‘Someone should go up and down the aisle, like an usherette, selling coffee and sandwiches.’ I called after her.

Or vagina soup.

A2, pencils and felt pens on paper.
I think I saw something like this in my childhood and am now simply repeating it.
It feels like a complete ripoff.

Today’s good thing was kneeling on my studio floor and finishing this drawing off.
I was in good company today.
Laura was in and we talked of many things-
The pill.
Jeremy Kyle.
The Nasty Party’s idea to limit benefit payments.
Farting.
Hanging one of my prints on a toilet wall and colouring it while shitting.

Days with Lady Laura Price are never dull.

This drawing is approx a metre by a metre and a half.
I used coloured pencils and felt pens to draw it.
I will need £1200 from you if you would like to take it home.

Yesterday my friend, Amy Waters, the artist, came to visit me in my studio.
Amy Waters is a ray of sunshine in what can sometimes be a gloomy life.
I once visited her house and she showed me her family photo albums.
In every single photo, every member of the Waters family was smiling.
On holiday-smiling!
At home-smiling!
Undergoing brain surgery-smiling!

There was not one sullen pout, not a grimace, not a ‘get that camera out of my face’ look.

There was just pure, beaming happiness on every page.

Being with the Waters could make the Dalai Lama feel like he was a miserable shit.
Everyone should be forced to spend a few hours with the Waters.

They’re a family of natural anti-depressants. 

'Well sometimes I go out, by myself, and I look for Amy Waters…'
Isn’t that what Amy Winehouse sang? 

I’ve been building a city with felt pens and photographic paper.
Whilst doing it I’ve sat my iPhone atop a tripod and made a stop frame, a frame every 3 seconds.
This is part 2.
Part 1 is here.

ETA for this drawing is this afternoon, at which point there will be the final film in the trilogy of ‘I Build a City with Felt Pens and Photographic Paper.

The best felt pens, by the way, have not been Sharpies, but the cheaper WH Smith felt pens.

'I've been building a man, with blonde hair and a tan,
And he’s good for relieving my….tension.’ 

No, I haven’t.
I’ve been making more frameographs while I draw.
This is another, this time on a large piece of photographic paper.
I used a lot of felt pens.
I’m on the hunt for the best pens with which to cover photo paper.
So far Lumocolour by Staedtler work best.

But they’re hard to find in the country stationers/art shops.
I need bigguns, too.
 

Here’s another one.
From beginning to end.
White paper to fully coloured.
You can see the completed drawing here. 

Bought an adaptor for my iPhone that makes it sit on a tripod.
Set it up in the living room and made a little test of a stop frame of me drawing.
Used an app called Frameograph.
Used an harmonica loop from my Apple loops library.
This is a test, really.
I want to film the next drawing I do in it’s entirety.

Let me know your thoughts.

This was finished last week.

It features the face of Elvis.

I read a 1950’s movie magazine and a 1950’s home shopping catalogue, both from the USA.

70x100cm

Black ink on Fabriano paper

£800