Here are the rest of my Inktober drawings for 2019. During the month, though I never seemed to have much time for contemplation, I was repeatedly asking myself, where is the essence of what I do? How can I connect with that mysterious flow of creativity, when things seem to just come together, almost by themselves, without me having to think too deeply – let the rhythm flow. That is the goal of all our art of course, and one of the attractions of Inktober. Another reason why

This month the House of Illustration in London is running a daily art challenge to create a 1-inch (26mm) square piece of artwork every day of the month and post to social media. The idea was sparked by their currently running exhibition of the work of John Vernon Lord, who drew daily one-inch square drawings as an exercise for a whole year. This challenge is just for a month, but it’s the kind of thing that appeals to me, and I’ve decided to give it a go. Here are my drawing

For the seventh selection in A History of my Archive in 10 Objects here are some surviving sketchbooks from my 3 years on the Illustration course at Manchester Polytechnic. Okey, so this is cheating a bit – these are clearly more than one object! But the contents are pretty consistent and were all bundled together in my father’s loft, so I think I can safely lump them together as a single item. Actually, very little remains of my work from the years 1978-1981 while I was at M

In part three of 10 objects from the archive of objects found in my dad’s house, I’d like to offer this. After the tentative steps of the Henry Hudson picture I worked on two other school projects before setting to work on this large piece, which proved to be the most experimental and successful of my school drawings in pure pen and ink. It was drawn from a randomly selected photo reference using a multi coloured pen and ink line technique – on the face and hat I used three s

Number 2 in the discoveries made at my dad’s house from long hidden archives of my work. In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d ever see this picture again, but there it was, in my dad’s loft, warts and all, the very first drawing I ever attempted in pen and ink, from 1975, aged 16. Prior to this drawing I’d worked steadily but unassumedly at school on assigned projects. It was acknowledged that I was “good at art”, but this was post modernist, late hippy mid 1970’s, most o

For the first in the Museum of My Archive in 10 Objects  (apologies to Neil MacGregor and the British Museum) I bring you a sketch of our house, drawn just before my 17th birthday from our back garden during the sweltering summer of 1976. We lived in Butlers Lane, Sutton Coldfield from 1970 until the end of 1977,  this was the house where I grew from child to teenager. It was a corner house and significantly bigger than any of our previous (and subsequent!) homes. My parents