Before anyone feels the need to castigate me regarding my absence from the world of posting, I would like to save them the trouble. My guilt over not posting lately has become something of a large stick with which I am now adept at beating myself with. It hurts, emotionally as much as anything else. Unlike compulsory things in life like school homework, writing a best mans speech and filling out ones tax return, a blog is thankfully voluntary. This makes it indulgent, personal, experimental and loaded with an intangible sense of achievement whenever a post is completed. It also makes it prey to that most horrible of thieves, procrastination.  Described in an age old adage as the “thief of time”, procrastination occupies a place in most of our lives. it’s just that some of us deal with it more effectively than others.

In a way I could describe myself as a life long procrastinator, though recently I’ve realised that it’s not as simple as that. If I were truly a procrastinator I’d get nothing done at all but, generally I get a good deal of stuff done, just not necessarily in the order and timescale in which I first envisioned doing it. What I have a tendency to do is constantly shuffle the order of my tasks which leads to me doing certain things as a way of avoiding doing others. Or as a way of making it seem alright not to do something that has no specific deadline. I had a quick glance on the net about this and have found an interesting article which talks about structured procrastination, the art of putting stuff off whilst getting a lot done.

I shall read further into this area and get back to you with my findings, when I finally get round to it!

Needless to say, the time between now and my last post has been quite busy (here I go exercising the procrastinators primary defence tool, the excuse). May, June and a bit of July got swallowed up with a big freelance job, and I’m in no position to turn work away. Yes I have remnants of evenings and weekends not working but to be honest with you I’m usually pretty creatively exhausted by the end of a long day. I had a short holiday in Turkey, on a boat, which I would recommend to anyone and work has picked up again since my return. Being summer there has been lots to do getting the garden into shape and there have been some great days out on the motorbike as well.

Though I may not have been posting I have at least been sketching out some ideas for some more drawings. The sketch shown here is an expansion upon an idea I had some time ago. The core theme, if there is one is based around the concept of a kind of monocoque that surrounds the engine and forms the meat of the frame and bodywork in a single form. It’s not a new idea in the sense that bikes have been designed and built like this for real but it’s an idea I wanted to explore in my artform. What’s great about drawings like these is that one can include lots of apparently extreme engineering ideas, like the mono-fork front end without worrying too much about whether it really works or not. Does it make the drawing more interesting, that’s what I’m after.

I’m sticking with my penchant for a great big engine in there and  bit of exaggeration when it comes to the other aspects of the bike without it looking too unfeasible.

I’m going to work this one up in ink on some decent paper, using my previously mentioned new light box, and I’m sorely tempted to throw a bit of colour at it in the way of a watercolour wash rather than a tightly precise painting. Not quite sure how that’s going to work but it’s worth taking the risk as long as I keep the original sketch to work up from again if I make a mess of it.

Watch this space.