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Insect sketch from the imagination

Contemporary art sketch - insect print

Imaginary beetle sketch

Digital. 2012.

A digital sketch created for a print. It features a stylised insect drawn from my imagination.
The insect is drawn in a sketchy black and white style that is perhaps suggestive of images produced using traditional printmaking techniques such as woodcut, woodblock or linocut. It also reminds me of scraper board.
The black sky makes me think that it’s a nocturnal insect of some kind. It also looks a bit like a tortoise for some reason, with perhaps a bit of rhinoceros thrown in.

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Surreal sea creature. Drawing from the imagination.

contemporary art surreal dada bizarre sea creature

A surreal sea creature drawn from the imagination.

Digital image. 6th May 2023

A bizarre sea creature created digitally in Procreate on an iPad. The shape of the sea creature is based on the number six, as the image was created as part of an exercise in which I sketched several images on my iPad based on the numbers between zero and nine. The concept behind the exercise was that by having to take into account the restraints of including a number in each image I would be forced to work with forms or shapes that I might not think up straight from my imagination.

When creating the sketch I was attempting to produce a bizarre, weird and sinister image. The result looks as though it owes a debt to surrealism, dada and the symbolists.

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Different artists having the same idea

Humorous contemporary text-based art

An example of the same concept by different artists.

Drawing. 2019. Photo: Harrison and Wood, Frieze, London. 2022

An example of different artists thinking of the same idea independently.
My cartoon drawing is a joke about text-based art from a book of cartoons that I produced on the subject of contemporary art and humour in 2019 ( See here ).
The photograph is of a sculptural text-based work by Harrison and Wood that was exhibited at Frieze London in 2022.

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Leaping man with antlers

contemporary art print – sketch from the imagination

Leaping Stagman.

Pen and ink plus digital. 30x21cm. 2020

A sketch of a leaping male figure with antlers.
I’ve drawn several images featuring men who have antlers growing from their heads. They are something to do with the concept of alpha males, or males who try to pass themselves off as alpha males. Linked to concepts of freedom and over-reaching ambition.

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Pencil sketch – imaginary winged creatures

contemporary art pencil sketch from the imagination - imaginary winged creature

Imaginary winged creatures.

Drawing from the imagination. Pencil on paper. 21.3.2022.

Drawings from my sketchbook. Imaginary creatures consisting of spheres with anatomical features such as wings or legs recur quite often in my work. I like the way that in anatomical terms a sphere can be both a head and a body at the same time.
This is a drawing from the imagination (obviously), drawn during a spare moment over a coffee in a cafe.

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Spider heads – pencil sketch from the imagination

contemporary art spiders - pencil sketch from the imagination

Spider heads.

Pencil on paper. 20.6.2022.

I frequently draw imaginary heads in unusual situations. On two of these ‘spider heads’ I’ve turned the hair on the heads into long spider legs, with the heads forming the anatomically incorrect spiders’ bodies.
I think the spider legs in these sketches probably owe something to the spiders of Louise Bourgeois. The spiders may also be influenced by the work of Symbolist artist Odilon Redon, whose The Crying Spider has definnite similarities, although I don’t remember having seeing it before I drew my sketch. I did read a book about Symbolism back in the 1970s, Dreamers of Decadence by Philippe Jullian, so maybe it was in that (When I say I read the book, I mean that I looked at the pictures).
Like many of my imaginary sketches these were drawn over a cup of coffee in a cafe.

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Pencil sketch from the imagination

contemporary art drawing from the imagination

Ball with multiple arms and legs.

Pencil on paper. 10.8.2022.

I often carry a sketch book with me in case I have a free moment when inspiration strikes. I drew this in a cafe over a cup of coffee.
It incorporates several motifs that recur in my work (spheres and arms and legs).
I think that the idea is that the imaginary creature in the drawing moves forwards by rolling from leg to leg rather than by swinging its legs as we do.
Like most of my work, it’s purely from my imagination (and the imaginations of artists and illustrators that I’ve seem previously and that have seeped into my subconscious).