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#personal

I didn’t end up hearing anything else about the missing package.  I spent most of that morning at the gym thinking about how I would react.  Standing outside in the cold at six in the morning in front of my house talking to somebody you don’t know is intimidating enough.  Plotting to kick a gang off a block is another thing entirely.  Which is what it sounded like half asleep on my way to work and my regular gym routine.  If anyone has learned anything about my real life in Chicago at this point from these blogs, it’s that people try to get me to react to all sorts of crazy things.  It doesn’t help that I’m a highly cerebral and genuine person when it comes to approaching life.  I’ve also been fairly transparent with my approach to my online identity.  I work in IT.  I also work at an art school.  I’m also unique in my own personal ethics, beliefs and creative pursuits.  I have my own life and I live it with accountability.  I think after all this time particularly in this space I believe people know that to be true about me.  There are many things I’ve come to understand about life.  Self expression on the internet is part of who I am.  I’ve been online for years.  Before I even became involved with music I was making zines and getting suspended from high school because of it.  I distributed it in the local record store when I lived in the suburbs.  I didn’t grow up in the city but I commuted to a Christian school that was a mix of kids from all over.  Some parents found one of the younger kids I rode the bus with had one of my zines.  He picked it up at a record store.  It wasn’t explicit at all.  But there were elements of the occult and horror involved.  Mostly drawn and written by local artists and poets I connected with.  Real spooky shit.  They took it to the board and tried to get me expelled.  It was only when my English teacher came to my defense that I got off with an in school suspension.  They lock you in this little room and you think about what you’ve done.  Years later I’m an adult with a blog.  It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch.  Locked in another tiny little room.  If it becomes one, we’ll all know where they stole it from.  That is if the site doesn’t shut down tomorrow.  Which if anyone was careful enough to actually read the community alerts they would know that isn’t true. Just like they’d know I’ve left all of my content up since I made this URL my main back in 2010.  You can tell how sad and lonely I was back then.  And yet some things never change about me.  There’s enough of a narrative here over time that people trust that’s ok for me.  That narrative is part of a community of people who have grown to know and respect each other over time.  One like at a time.

So when it comes to defense and reality, December 17th is a sobering date for some people.  If we are talking about the health of the community and the platform in my eyes, nothing is ever perfect.  In the last four months, I’ve connected with a lot more fashion resources here.  Years ago I came to Tumblr to research fashion and Asian culture.  I think my lens has narrowed over the years particularly how it relates to fetishism and objectification.  It helped that I was exposed to real texts and work through this website that challenged my views of these things.  I’ve seen a lot of good resources go dark.  There was a url called cottonblanc that used to transcribe Caroline Evans’ “Fashion at the Edge” word for word.  She teaches at Central Saint Martins and frames everything in the philosophy of Walter Benjamin.   I went out and bought a copy.  I would read whole chapters on Margiela and Mcqueen over and over.  Then one day the url deleted.  And a time and an era definitely passed for me.  But I carried that torch forward with what I learned and evolved with it.  I’ve been wearing Undercover for years.  Nobody knew what it was.  Everyone thought I was the police.  Maybe that’s why all the landlords ask me to solve their problems at six in the morning before I go to the gym.  Some DJ in Vancouver told my friend they knew me not through my music but because I bought an Undercover jacket one hour before they could get to it.  Truthfully I copped my first piece from a reseller on tumblr years ago.  A streetwear and DJ friend who ran the Tokyo Marathon and later passed away introduced me to Gyakusou.  It was a time I was trying to find myself again.  I had just ended a ten year relationship with a girl I really loved at the time.  Sometimes I feel like I’ve only recently recovered.  But I’ve been living another layer of that aesthetic since the summer.  And it has woven itself into the very fabric of the internet like a virus spreading out in a William Gibson novel.  It’s places like these where I’ve been in my element.  It’s a different kind of search engine for me.  Albeit an emotional one.  Which is why I can understand a lot of the concerns especially when it comes to censorship of art.  Which is why I think many of us have to understand that art in itself is a refuge.  And where you draw the line in America is a tricky subject.  

Safety seems the most logical but isn’t always evenly distributed.  Art is a safe space where these things can flourish.  That’s the utopian ideal for sure.  There’s entire schools dedicated to where you draw that line.  And there’s entire narratives that get drowned out for the sake of convenience and lack of care, time or attention.  I’ve written my experiences and frustrations here for longer than I can imagine.  They’ve grown more formatted over time.  It’s true I write these to maintain the fact that I am a human being.  There are reasons why I post the things I do.  I work in an environment where it is crucial that I understand things like microaggresions and triggers.  I’m sensitive to that.  I can’t say I always agree that people are sensitive to mine.  I don’t know that I need that really.  This community in particular and how it spans out into the real world and other platforms has always had my back.  There’s voices on this platform that I trust far more than any semi important name you can throw at me.  People I trust that trust me.  There’s a mutual respect there that goes unspoken.  And that follows me around sometimes.  A reputation.  Of someone that has tried playing by the rules and kept score.  Other people out there keep saying they’re winning.  Do you know how many times people have passed me over because someone else told them I was a loser?  The joke is that it’s all right here.  Exactly how many battles I’ve won.  Exactly how many challenges I’ve learned are worth my time.  Exactly how much I’ve put into the culture here and stood up for it.  When you ask me what I’m most proud of about my time here it’s that people have come to understand me genuinely.  None of what I’ve gone through is fair at all these last few years.  And yet I’ve stood my ground on many things out of principle.  I do believe American culture is overtly too sexual and not sensual and sensitive enough.  I do believe there’s a way you can present your desires without being creepy about it.  And I do believe this platform probably wasn’t becoming a safe place for that.  As of December 17th, despite some extremely flawed and gender heavy wording it will be.  The good news is that art will be there on the front lines to challenge that.  Which means people like me aren’t going anywhere.  Except maybe to New York to visit a little more often next year.  <3 Tim

Sam Elston: Drawing People & Writing Thoughts

In this post, I’m looking at local artist Sam Elston, his portfolio of work and the importance of drawing from life for inspiration.

Self-portrait. (2018). Taken from https://www.instagram.com/p/BiRoFLGDRK_/?taken-by=samelston_

Based in Essex, artist Sam Elston produces incredibly energetic and expressive illustrations and sketches. His works have an appealing dynamic aesthetic, with loose linework and gestural marks. He’s interested in capturing the everyday - and as such, he’s only got a limited time to sketch that fleeting image before it fades away. This kinetic, rapid approach to drawing can be best seen through a more recent example of his work, Interests are Interesting.

The use of muted, flat greys and greens give the piece a dull aesthetic, something which reflects the ‘everyday’ quite effectively. This is doubly true then riding a public bus, where life seems it’s most banal. The lines look as if they could move at any moment, with scribbled marks creating an inherently exciting and dramatic atmosphere - even when it’s just a bus driver and his pin collection. This plays a part in the successes of the artist’s entire portfolio, I think. He takes moments from everyday life, ones which we tend to overlook, and forget to admire in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, and illustrates these in loose, observational comics.

This same dull, flat theme can be seen in a few of his works, most notably Steel Grey Day - a piece with his signature hand-drawn aesthetic, with clear mark making that creates an effective, lo-fi and naive finish to the work. The hint of colour gives the comic a focus, but blends in well with the dull tones of the rest of the piece. Real life isn’t in greyscale, obviously, and the subtle muted blue gives a life which still feels very monotonous, and weirdly, grey.

Along with these hand-rendered pieces, Sam is able to make subtle commentary on everyday life - writing his thoughts whilst drawing which creates sublime works of visual poetry: his observational comics in particular could be considered the comic equivalent of a haiku, with loose, scribbled images of everyday life accompanied by imaginative and ambiguous thoughts working together to throw the audience into Sam’s shoes.

These observational comics inspired me in particular, and over the Easter break I decided to produce a few more, inspired by the ideas behind the artist’s work. In these pieces, I adopted an aesthetic from one of Sam’s earlier works, Faces, a simple exercise in which he went out and began drawing people in cafes, as reference for another project. These have a confident, bold line quality that I found visually quite interesting - and I think with a Sharpie there’s a spontaneity in your marks - you’ve just got to start drawing, without any planning or sketching first. There’s an honesty in the process that I like, and so decided to adopt it in my own comics.

Faces. (2017). Sam Elston.

Through this, I produced several of these ‘observational comics’, and found it to be quite a fun exercise - most importantly, it made observational drawing interesting and fresh for me as a graphic artist. Normally this is where I’d go into more depth on the artist’s portfolio, but I decided to contact Sam via email and we were able to talk about his work, why he started making observational comics, his influences and a quick review of my own art.

To begin, I asked why Sam started creating observational comics - if it helped with composition or characters. ‘At the start I just wanted to improve my drawing skills to try and find a consistency in the drawings I was doing, so I started drawing a page a day in an A6 Sketchbook - which gave me a size restriction and I suppose started the whole panel thing. I was never very good at making up stuff straight from my head and found it much easier to just pause and draw whatever was in front of me at a set time each day.’

It seems like it wasn’t really a conscious idea to make it a comic - it just happened through the format he was using. This is quite an interesting idea, and none of the artists he goes on to mention follow this panelled structure - suggesting this was his own personal touch.

This regular drawing helped Sam build his confidence and speed with his sketches, who began playing around with the composition of the page. ‘At this time, I would mainly draw things rather than people because I would take longer and people move all the time. At the same time I wouldn't let myself spend more than around 5/10 minutes on each drawing otherwise I’d end up never finishing it.’

Adding a time limit seems to breed creativity - this is something that I’ve begun doing in life drawing classes and my own work, and the challenge forces you to capture a specific subject or person in the quickest way possible. This idea of timing yourself for a drawing is perfectly expressed in the comics I’ve discussed already, thinking about the expressive and scribbled marks in Interests are Interesting especially. 

‘I came across Robert Weaver by accident when I was looking in a 'lots of artists in a book' book and really liked his Reportage work and then found 'Robert Weaver: A Pedestrian View' which is a book that has more of his personal work in. When I saw this stuff, something just made sense and realised that I could add text to what I was drawing and it didn't really need to make complete sense or have a big narrative, it could still be as natural as just sitting down and drawing except now it would be a case of, draw what is in front of you and write down what you're thinking.’

This summarises Elston’s work perfectly - draw what’s infront of you, and write down your thoughts whilst doing so. He’s clearly not taking the aesthetic from Weaver, however - with his examples in A Pedestrian View staying true to a sense of realism, with an acrylic still life aesthetic illustrating anonymous legs in a constant state of motion, manholes and police barricades. There’s splashes of colour to add life to the composition, but his works echo more of a still life painting than an energetic moment in our everyday lives, as Sam’s does. 

Up until this point, Sam had been strictly drawing from life - not writing from it. Seeing Weaver’s works, however, inspired him to stop worrying about a linear narrative and begin writing his own thoughts in addition to his comics, creating a series of works which took the idea of an observational comic in a very traditional place. These examples are rather cinematic and introspective, acting almost as a camera pan around his home town as the naive, wobbly lines illustrate seemingly banal scenes of coffee machines and Chinese takeaways.

‘So I would try and do a full spread per day and write down what I was thinking at the time of drawing. At this point, I had planned to make what I drew in this sketchbook into a zine so started playing with panel size and the flow of it from page to page so that it looked more like a comic than the stuff before but I think it was more along the lines of a visual diary.’

At this point, Elston was avoiding drawing people, due to the fact that they move around and it’s quite an unnerving activity for the first few times you try it. This is a sentiment that I share, but exploring Sam’s work and discussing how to approach observational drawing made me go out and draw people in my sketchbook, using the same loose style.

Discussing his more recent influences, Sam mentioned the work of artist Joost Stokhof - an artist who draws and writes things on an A4 page until he’s filled it, with the compositions hinting at storylines and bigger narrative, drawn from life. Looking at Stokhof’s work, I can see a clear influence on Sam’s more recent work - which abandon the traditional panelled approach to comics and show a more spacious, loose composition. Sam’s keeping with the scratchy and scribbled aesthetic, however, which allows his art to stand apart from the somewhat more refined, linear and minimal line work from Stokhof’s examples.

I think responding to an artist’s visual style can be exciting, but it’s more interesting, to me, at least, when we incorporate an artist’s philosophy and thought process to our own work. This way, we’re able to move past mimicry and a purely superficial line of enquiry and visual analysis and hit more distinctive areas when responding to our research.

An idea that I’ve found to be strictly Sam’s own, however, is the use of a ‘cardboard view finder’ to create the compositions for his comics. This struck me as an original and creative approach to the medium, so I asked why he began using it. “If I’m in a slump, I use the viewfinder to help me find interesting compositions as it can be hard to see them when you can see everything at once, I think a lot of it is about giving yourself restrictions whether that is time, size or focus points.”

An example of one of Sam’s viewfinders

That last part was one of the most important ideas to take away from the conversation, I think. As artists, when we give ourselves restrictions we force ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and be creative in ways we aren’t used to. When I begin designing characters, I’ll be following Sam’s practice and giving myself a time limit on each sketch, keeping the illustrations expressive and loose.

“As for a reason why [I make comics], I think it's to keep me drawing as there is no excuse not to, if all it is is what is in front of you, it can become a very cathartic process if you let it - I think it would be a good thing to start and try and keep a Visual Diary as it gives you space to try stuff out that can help inform your practice and it should definitely help to free you up and grow your confidence and speed with drawing.’

I asked about drawing people - his process, experience and any tips. “Coffee shops are good if you sit in a corner where you can see lots of people (they're normally all too busy talking so you can stare at them easily) or sit at a window then you can draw people outside. To loosen up and warm up at the start draw 10 faces in 10 minutes (they might not turn out any good or they might - who cares because they're warm-ups) get a sketchbook just for warm ups if you don't want to draw straight into your main one. If you think they are going to drastically move or leave half way through you drawing them - take a sneaky picture and use that instead. For practice, draw from pictures but only give yourself a few minutes.’  

Coffee Shop Drawings. (2018). Sam Elston.

This is something that Sam’s put a recent focus on, producing quick studies of people in cafes. Drawing people is something I’ve been working on throughout this project, something which, previously, had always been rather intimidating to me. All the animation tutors I’ve spoken to have stressed the importance and value of drawing people as a great exercise for animators - and so this is something I’ve been trying to keep up with on a regular basis. It’s a good way to develop ideas for characters, but also I’ve found it helps to develop skills in gestural and figure drawing - as I only have a few moments to sketch someone before they walk past.

Finally, I asked Sam to make an overall comment on my work, shown on Instagram.

‘It's really good that you're letting your own personal interests feed into the work your creating (if that makes sense? Like, I can see that you do actually have an interest in film and animation because of the work you're making and the research you're doing.) so I would try and continue to do that and see how you can push that further.’ This was an idea I hadn’t even considered about my work - that it conveys to the audience not only an interesting work, but my own passion for the craft, and subjects I’m exploring. He’s basically saying to continue to explore my own interests in my practical work - and that’s essentially what I’m doing with Exquisite Walks, exploring the potential of a walk cycle in animation in exciting new ways.

‘By the looks of it, you've got pretty good digital skills to be able to put together the animations, videos and digital drawings so keep that going and see how you can combine traditional and digital methods together in the work you make - which I can see you've been starting to do with the Moonlight animation tests. Illustratively, you're getting a good confidence in your line work. I think FMP will be a great time for you to step out of your comfort zone and try and learn something new because you've got a good skill set to work with that will be worth pushing. ‘

A few of my works that Sam is discussing. 

‘Learning something new’ is essentially the mantra for my FMP, as I’m drawing people from observation, learning new animation techniques and I’ll be exploring how to make a stop motion puppet - pushing my 3D skills further than I’ve ever done before. It’s not something that I’m particularly confident with, and is probably one of the biggest ways I could ‘step out of my comfort zone’ with an animation project. It will be a challenge, but that’s how we grow as artists.

A little project of Sam’s that I was particularly inspired by was his ink warm ups, using a brush and ink to produce quick character sketches. This is something that I found really interesting, and wanted to incorporate as a warm up for my own character designs. The challenge comes from the time limit, use of a brush instead of a pencil, and the camera watching your every move - it’s a timelapse so just recording your process forces you to work in Sam’s signature ‘loose’ approach.

There’s no time to think when you’re on camera, and as result, my pieces possess a loose, fluid line and uneven, quick ink aesthetic. These are just warm up sketches, but it’s an exercise which allowed me to get ‘loose’ in a mindset sense additionally to my linework - working in an autonomous, instinctual manner like my compositions with the Abstract Aesthetics workshop. They’re quick sketches, and they obviously have value through these quick approach - but there’s a difference between lose and ‘bad’. It’s a fine line, and I think it’s a line that I’m skirting with a few examples. With the brush size that I was using, I should have focused on heads and faces - the few body illustrations I attempted look very amateur and crude in comparison to my other examples.

This is a process that I’ll continue to use as I progress through my FMP, as it challenges me to abandon my structured predisposition and ‘get loose’ with my drawings. Brush and ink is a medium that I’m yet to feel comfortable with, and results in a distinctive, visually exciting aesthetic and imaginative, aloof designs, not responding to anything other than my own thoughts.

Through this online discussion, and looking at Sam Elston’s portfolio of work and producing my own observational comics, I’ve learnt the value of drawing from life for inspiration. There’s a wealth of ideas to draw from when we respond to things and people around us - an honesty and substance that results when we’re producing our own research. A key idea that we’ve discussed in class is how primary research is essential for a successful, distinctive self-led project, and I will continue to draw from life as I begin to develop character designs from my own observational sketches, and recorded walk cycles.

This also marks the first time I’ve been able to conduct my own primary artist research, contacting Sam and discussing his process first hand. Not only was this to hit the higher grading criteria of the brief, but also to make my research more valuable and useful to me as an artist. I was able to discuss his thought process and get some ideas for my own developments into character design, in a way that moves past simply reading from a website article.

Whats next? Having explored the work of Sam Elston in detail as an artist case study, I’ll be focusing on creating character sketches and developing these into several designs for my animation. With this, and my contextual research into the idea of an Exquisite Corpse and Richard William’s approach to a walk cycle, I’m shifting my focus into producing exciting practical outcomes - creating character designs and learning new animation techniques.

Recently, I was able to attend a street art tour in London exploring some of the world’s most exciting works of graffiti and street art. This was a great experience, and introduced me to a handful of interesting artists that I plan to briefly discuss in an upcoming blog post.

Actions

In my sketchbook, continue to draw people from observation following Sam’s challenges

Create several character designs in response to these drawings, using a time limit to produce a series of designs with a range of materials

Write about the London Street Art Tour, discussing key artists that I found exciting e.g. Nathan Bowen and MCLN.

New References

Weaver, W., 2013. Robert Weaver. Distributed Art Pub Inc.

Self-portrait. (2018). Sam Elston.