




I'm still really wanting to try screen printing! Ideally, I would have liked to produce on of the posters as a print, but time and practicalities seem to be working against me...I wish I was living in one of those 3rd year houses so I'd be closer to the college for a year...on second thoughts!
I think I've shown the image to the left as part of an earlier post in its simplest form...pen on paper. I found myself talking to my partner in a state of irritation...how am I going to portray these passages as images? As I was talking, I was drawing on a scrap piece of paper, intended for the purpose of writing a shopping list.
Why do I choose the pens that I use? Is it because I like the feeling of the nib on the paper? Ellie introduced me to 'The Mitsubishi pen about 6 years ago. prior to that I would use the artist fine tip pens most of the time. Why not choose a different drawing tool? I've tried countless pens...others run out quicker, damaged nibs etc. Is it wrong of me to say that they are cost effective?
Why did I choose the drawing tool above? was it because it was close to hand? I could have used a brush tipped ink pen.
The figure hovers over what appears to be a liquid shadow, on the verge of jumping into itself?
The paper...was there a reason why, at that moment I felt a need to draw? was I using the pen as an external way in which to think through a problem? Is it valid as an illustrator to allow what seemed to be an unconscious doodle and turn it into a figure? Is it OK to transform the squiggle into a shape that resembles a person? Does this relate to the text in a legitimate way?
The colours....I'd like to try and produce some images via other means but this one has been rendered in photoshop. Why have I chosen them? I don't think a photoshop image does the book justice. Perhaps it looks a bit humorous? Is this the way that I want to put the book across to a wider audience? What would engage the types of people who would buy The New York Trilogy? Is this it? Would someone really commission this? Would I commission this if I were the owner of Bookers in Oxford?


I made this on a recent paper rolling course held at my studio, Mr 'Humptyhillhead.' It seemed fitting that a gust of wind sent him falling from the wall of a disused petrol station on the outskirts of Caistor, Lincolnshire. He's the great Mr everybody and Mr nobody all at once.
I was stood at the bus stop before work the following Monday, reading Finnegans Wake. I couldn't help but notice people edging away from me as I was unable to suppress a display of mirth, I mean boomeringstroms......

...I've been feeling like I've come to a bit of a full stop in my poster design for the NYC trilogy. Why is this? It could perhaps be down to the lack of devoted studio time over the last couple of months.
The image to the left was also produced when I went to Barcelona back in March. I sometimes feel that my more 'successful' work tends to be produced on the spot and without a brief in mind. I feel that my latest work lacks a certain degree of spontaneity...welcome to the world of illustration Mr Renshaw?
I've been collecting illustrations from the Guardian as a suggestion in a recent tutorial...to see what kind of work is being commissioned. I've kind of given up on The Independent...probably not such a bad thing anyway as there doesn't seen to be much illustration on the pages. I'm nearly at the end of the 2 week collection and have found our recycling stack has increased rapidly as a result.
Process: I began to cut out skyscraper shapes out of the newspaper. I read the text...'itten an apparentl...y letter to Abraham...he arrangement be...to distance other...om the crisis, Mend...d no one in the part use Watt had assun...was awful....'
The other side of the paper 'skyscraper' is a picture of 'Ghost moisturiser.' I had originally thought that cutting up some of the text from my Guardian collection was a bit random, thinking that the potential buyer of a book wouldn't see a connection with the text in the book. Perhaps I could photocopy some pages from the actual dialogue in chapter 9, or anywhere else in the trilogy for that matter? I must remind myself to 'post the ghost.'
I was stood at the bus stop in my village the other morning reading The Humpty Dumpty extract of Finnegans Wake before the joyous trip to my place of work. I'm thinking of it now...the verse, although I can't remember the words, gave the sense of being pushed backwards and forwards, to and fro,' almost a feeling of seasickness. The great landlord...the egg of the village.


the trilogy and depict it through a selection of textless narratives.






...carpets, bits of rubble, trash, faded people, I catch myself in mirrors...no longer the small boy with candy floss reflecting back in the Isle Of Man with 'The Reflex' by Duran Duran and 'Paint It Black' by The Rolling Stones. I wander like the early Quinn. Plastic horses canee drive me away...I walk up to another Elvis machine. 


Working with the first conversation in mind...a drawing produced in the condensation of a glass panel. I felt that this had been the most natural feeling piece of work that I'd produced in the 'style' of Basquiat.
I was on the train on the way to Lincoln. The carriage was packed like sardines, I was standing inches from the people in the foyer to the first carriage. where does one look? I felt most comfortable trying to glimpse out of the window, my eye catching abstract hints of the countryside. I started watching the drops of water racing down the window pane like the paint on a Basquiat.
The first conversation finds the characters of Quinn and Stillman on a bench in Riverside Park. Sitllman talks about the 'world being in fragments,' and it is his intention to put it back together...' He believes that 'words no longer correspond to the world.' It is his intention to create a new language and spends time wandering the city collecting bits of crushed, discarded junk in which to put the world back together again.
early morn...5.35am








