Transport, wifi and charging issues conspired to prevent this going out earlier, but that’s all part of daily fail anyway. I was limited as usual to materials to hand, and I think taking risk is often just a consequence of having to make do. In the ideal world you would use X but in practice all you’ve got is Y and it won’t produce anything like you have in mind but there’s the challenge. So I was splashing the contents of a water bottle onto soluble graphite pencils on a tra

Back on track now fighting linoleum with blunt tools. Not good. Luckily I’m traveling down to London tomorrow and will hopefully be able to visit some vast art materials emporium and walk away with some new scarily sharp tools. I plan to work on this on the train if some jobsworth doesn’t claim I’m a health and safety hazard. Well, maybe I am. #creativity #Failure #Postaday #risk

A minimalist daily fail today. Minimal work and minimal in appearance for the moment. I was distracted from the task I was supposed to see to, and instead set off on a jaunt around the unfamiliar streets of Halston, Beeston and Holbeck in south Leeds in search of pubs surrounded by wasteland. I am suddenly obsessed by these seemingly flourishing pubs in the middle of nowhere. So all I managed was a series of backgrounds. Enjoyable though. #creativity #Failure #Postaday #risk

Excellent. A proper, irritating daily fail today. Found it very hard to move on the new project for this week which is a comparatively straightforward requirement for a limited edition print to accompany an anticipated launch of my recent artist’s book (details of which can be found on my website). It’s a fun thing to do, and since it is based on the hundreds of hours of work I put in on drawings for the book, I anticipate the final image I decide upon will be a very rapidly

Well, I got to where I needed to be today. I’ve learned a huge amount from the whole project; it’s been great fun; it’s taken me to places and ideas and concepts I haven’t visited before. And given it was something I started on whim and instinct as I worked through the idea on a six hour flight, I’m pleased I have seen it through to this point. And so: where to on Monday morning? #creativity #Failure #Postaday #risk

A day of complete and utter frustration and pointless activity which all had to be abandoned at 6.30pm. Lessons learned? There is NO substitute for making. All the visualization and diagrams and notes in the world are useless without making. But an elegant solution was eventually found, even if it is some way away from the original plan. And that’s exactly as it should be, I suppose. #creativity #Failure #Postaday #risk

Typically on a week where I have to seriously work to a stream of specific results, I have had days interrupted by pick ups and music lessons and other hassles to such a degree that I am having to work at home. Where I am being constantly and unnecessarily interrupted by even more stupid trivia. It is a miracle I am achieving anything. The puppet though is almost complete. #creativity #Failure #Postaday #risk

Ah, the joy of an unexpectedly glorious “failure”. I was trialling the opalescent screen and shadow puppets today. It’s fair to say I had no idea what to expect with these colored puppets I’m making. They’re not dependent on a clear black shadow outline, and a good thing too, because despite using the “correct” weight of card, I have some buckling of the card, and the figure I was using did not always lie flat against the screen. In other words, in purist terms, not “successf

I’ve realized I just cannot resist temptation to create a decent image of the non-sketchbook explorations. This cam experimenter called out for a graphic semi-abstract representation, and I’m an artist with a camera so what else should I do? Good job I ran a cam experiment is all I can say. It emphasizes the need for meticulous vertical drilling of the follower holes. That should be a decent challenge for tomorrow. #creativity #Failure #Postaday2012 #risk

Absurd to make a to do list for a weekend when I’m away and then think I can make something happen. Particularly when the to do list starts to compete for headspace with drawing possibilities. All I can do is struggle on. I realise I could work through these forms in a fraction of the time using the iPad or Photoshop but I’m stubbornly sticking to my vow to eschew easy fix no fail computer wizardry as I draw and redraw the figures from my head. I must remember to take the chu

Confronting the dreaded hands. Pages of drawing required so I can move to the watercolor drawing with fluid, instinctive lines and washes. Deconstructing the form of the hand; where are the bones, the muscles, the tendons likely to be? How far can I manipulate the movements and character? What is the exact relationship to the face normally, and to what extent should this be distorted to say what I want to say? #creativity #Failure #Postaday2012 #risk

My head is dangerously full of 3D movements options; gears, cams, sprockets and belts. I am unable to think about anything else which is making daily life pretty impossible and driving the car positively insane. I find some of my best ideas hit me when cruising the streets of Leeds, so construction ideas come thick and fast as I shoot along the inner ring road. But building a puppet theatre in my head at the wheel is decidedly inadvisable. I have chopped and sawn and assemble

It’s funny how ideas evolve. This blog series for example: I had no real Idea of what was going to happen, what I was going to post, but I’m happy so far that it’s establishing some firm of direction on this exploration of risk, play and creativity. I’m appreciative of all the comments I’ve had, and it’s lovely to have conversations about this aspect of making art which I find so fascinating. Today has been spent messing with fixing methods for limbs. And more playing with p

Running apace now on multiple fronts. Still messing for the shadow puppets, starting to assemble the actual puppet and busy drawing specs and sourcing materials for the whole ensemble. A frantic pace, and I’m still sorting out bedrooms in between productive moments. And I need to start testing materials of all sorts tomorrow. I must have raised technical queries with about half a dozen suppliers of products ranging from translucent screening material and styrene channels thro

Exploration is aways a challenge on busy days, but I have a serious deadline to meet at the end of the next week which isn’t disappearing and if I think about the fact I have two bedrooms to empty and clear and put back together again in this time I could happily stick my head in a paper bag and give up altogether. But I’m not going to do that and against all the odds I’m determined to see through this puppet/automata project. So I’m frantically playing with air-drying clay a

The entire day was almost a #dailyfail after falling back to sleep when I should have been up and about. Creativity was hampered by printer problems (yes, oh yes, the bitter irony given my distancing from technology for creative purposes) because I had source material on my iPad I thought it would be fun to print out. I have a low threshold for fun. So I had all of three minutes to play around with some water soluble pastel pencils I found lurking in a drawer. A deeper searc

Freezing cold, numb fingers, and another pile of mono prints but at least I have decided on a direction to go. The sketchbook has been busily occupied too. All this material/plastic activity is bearing fruit. I feel freer than I have done for a while. Let the failures continue. #creativity #Failure #Printmaking

An extremely satisfying set of fails today which is encouraging for resolving this piece over the next few days. Inspired by a workshop I did in December at The Art House in Wakefield, I eventually got around today to putting aside puppet and stage manufacture and turned to a mono printing session. The uncontrollability of the first few passes and mixing of techniques means that nothing is as expected and every time the paper is pulled away, I get a fresh insight into what ma

Woke in a panic this morning. Too many deadlines approaching, and I need to move up a few gears. So instead of rushing into the studio, I took time out to go and sit and make lists of what I needed to do and source. This required crystallising some technical bits for staging and presentation of one artwork I’m working on. So it was a process of drawing diagrams and becoming lost in 3D imaginary projections and working through how things would fit together. It works on paper.

I’m becoming a bit more relaxed each day posting the normally hidden pages of my sketchbook and related messings. Working in a open plan studio is something I’m used to, and that’s very exposing, but it’s still possible to hide stuff you can’t bear the idea of other people seeing. But I’ve reached a point already where I’m able to step back from the immediacy of unsatisfactory result, and recognise it as all part of this project, this journey into the unknown. I’m still fiddl