Category Archives: Doodles

Sidecars part deux.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Completing the drawing featured in the last post it was clear that there could be something in this sidecar thing. It’s great to “bank” a decent drawing early on as it provides a good spur to stick with a subject for a while and see where it takes you. It can be so easy to look at a picture and allow your brain to say “right, that’s that done, now for something else”. Your ability to say no to your inner self is a small bit of discipline that can take a heck of a lot of learning. So I thought I’d play with the subject for a while.

 

Initially I wasn’t too sure exactly why sidecar outfits are suddenly holding my attention but having thought about it for a bit there are some very good reasons why this is the case. Catching the televised coverage of this years Isle of Man TT races I realised how much I enjoyed watching the sidecar races and how utterly bonkers the whole thing is. It’s a kind of controlled madness and as such is very exciting. The machines today are a good deal faster and the whole dynamic is much more violent than in yesteryear, but it still amazes me how they do it. Modern outfits are more streamlined bullet than bike and sidecar combinations of the past, and it is these old solutions to solving the same problem that offer a great opportunity for some fun images. There’s more exposed machinery to try and capture, an engine you might get a glimpse of, some extreme gymnastics on the part of the passengers and everything about the machine is straining to follow that fine line between going fast and tipping over completely. It’s a target rich environment as it were, and one that I hope to spend some time having a look into.

The post images today are small sketches done following the bigger drawing. The top image is a quickie to see how the idea might look with some colour applied. The half finished view is how it looked before I caved in and added the sky and track edge detail. The final image is another very quick sketch where I’m thinking about including more than one outfit in the shot. A big colour drawing is definitely on the cards as a result and there are others that I’m working on now which are helping me explore some new techniques and media. They will be up here soon I hope.

 

 

Sidecars, an unexpected delight.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Sidecar No.1

Those of you who have been visiting the blog over the last few weeks and months will have heard me mention on more than one occasion that it’s a bit of a habit to be working on more than one thing at a time. You will also be familiar with my list keeping that helps to organise the workflow and assist in prioritising the order in which things happen. You would think, perhaps rightly, that these two things would conspire to keep the imagination fully fueled from now until some point in the distant future, and generally you would be correct. But sometimes a proverbial “curve ball” comes in from nowhere and changes the game plan completely.

 

On this occasion the disruptive little agent of change came calling whilst sat on a bench in a local park. I was deep into the Cafe Racer series and pretty sure what I was going to be doing next. It wasn’t a particularly nice day to be lost in a reverie on a park bench but that moment of free thinking just threw this word at me: Sidecars. I reached for my trusty A6 Moleskine notebook and made two very quick sketches which are shown below. No notes were made, just these two little scamps.

Back in the studio, pen hit lining paper with a rare intensity and within a very short space of time I had the bare bones of a much larger drawing, the big one at the top of this page. It’s rare to find myself able to work this fast, or this accurately, straight to paper. But knowing these moments don’t always come voluntarily lends them an exciting urgency which is best served by going with it for as long as it lasts. The drawing was “finished” the following morning, in the sense that it had reached the point where adding any more would have spoiled it.

 

It’s fantastic when this kind of thing happens. It’s so easy to get sucked into a situation where a schedule that you’ve created in an effort to ease any anxiety about what to do next becomes constraining, is actively removing flexibility from your working. It’s a psychological thing as much as a practical one obviously, and you’re never really tied to your plan, but it’s there to give you purpose. The unexpected game changers are great because if you’re open enough to engage them when they occur, you quickly realise that as important as it is to have a plan, it’s equally important to have the courage  and ability to change that plan and not be a prisoner of it.

 

Go with the flow, and see where it takes you………….

 

 

Cafe Racer No.6 – more progress.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Cafe Racer 6

While the urge to “ship” or complete any drawing or image is a strong one, it’s very much proving to be a case of “slowly, slowly, catchy monkey” with this one. Jacket and hands done, head and legs to follow, and then something to ground it. Pushing aside the daily distractions of everyday life to focus on a specific creative task, particularly when that task is not born of your normal world of deadline fueled rushing about, is a skill which all of us amateurs must constantly struggle with. I am no different. It is good to know though, that these periods of slow progress are more than balanced by highly productive phases when stuff just pours out of your head and hand, and across the page. these slower moments are also a great opportunity for reflecting on sketch work and ideas, learning new things, recharging the creative batteries and dabbling in other creative pursuits.It would be good to finish it off by the end of the week though.

Here above is another of the sketches done on lining paper a while ago whilst churning out ideas for the Cafe Racer series.I like the idea behind it but my execution of the idea went a bit off track which led to me not including it in the first series. Rather like with the previous sketch shown in the last post I managed to make a bit of a fudge of the front wheel and that kind of ran all the way up the front forks too. Must try harder. You’ll also notice, and fair dues if you haven’t, that the rider figure has a strange look about him. Amongst other things his nose is a tad weird and his chin’s gone the same way too. It’s only a sketch so one can’t be too critical but, these things matter if one is to learn from examining ones own work and improve things for the future. What works though is the bike, apart from the front bit of course. It has that solidity to it that I’m always looking for, a great big engine surrounded by a chunk of hefty engineering. Again this will likely get redrawn sometime in the future, perhaps in another medium, and much bigger even. certainly a contender for the pending file.