Et In Arcadia Ego

Dear all. Today I saw a real child birth. And an autopsy. A whole bunch of autopsy.

They call that "in media res". The Greeks invented it. I do Classics.

The Avant Garde cinema course is proving to be terribly, terribly pretentious, but unlike Noir, it's supposed to be. I had to fight with claws to get onto it, and even though I feel a little worried about my essays - what am I to write? - every time a film starts, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer rightness of the experience. I am meant to be here, because I love the experience of watching those films. Which is quite the opposite to the palpable sense of "what am I doing here?" caused by noir.

The makeup of the class is also interesting. Over my three years at uni, I've felt a bit isolated in both my courses by other people. I suppose that's no one's fault, as I'm a ghost in both my departments. I feel a sense of hostility off them, and I in turn feel hostile, normally directed towards specific people who just piss me off merely by existing. Friend 2 is right: I have rage issues. In any case, there is a noticeable subset of the film department who are proto-academics. They always engage with the most roundabout and bonkers parts of the texts. They evidently adore Ginsburg, Niezche and Kerouac. hey have moleskines, or recycled notepads with a checker pattern instead of lines. Many have leather satchels. Several are Marxists. They wear unflattering huge glasses, and grandad-sweaters - and that's just the guys.

Something else links them - they're all in this class, and I suppose it's because if you are a pretentious hipster, the course with the highest dropoff rate in the university which requires you to watch frequently offensive/dull/inconsequential/guano shorts is the place you gotta be. To prove your hardcoreness if nothing else. The type of people who, when your lecturer offers a one-off screening of a 7-hour long avant garde movie, actually take the offer up. I know I did, and all this is making me worry that I fit their company too well. I mean, who am I to criticise the way anybody dresses at all? This morning, I was inspired by William Holden in The Wild Bunch, which isn't even a film I liked: quite cowboyish, but very red.

They call that context.

Anyway, I started getting worried today when the lecturer suggested the high number of absences were caused by those who had read the articles about the movies in advance. I had not done the reading. I'd like to nobly say it was because I hated to spoil the surprise, and this is indeed true. I'm also lazy. We were informed that the first time she showed it, half her class walked out and one hurled, and that we were not allowed to leave. Although I'm sure we could have, if necessary. Not that it was necesssary: we're the American Underground class! The Hardcore Pretentious Hipster club! Why would we?

Of course, they'd all done the reading, so I missed out on what everyone was talking around until just before the DVD began. It came with a handy warning that the following movie contained "actual autopsy footage" - which in itself was interesting. As if the fact it was real changed something. I mean, it obviously does - but if you're going to be chilly about it, it's all just image, and you could have replicated that all with effects. Would it have been as uncomfortable to watch had it been identical, but with the comfort it wasn't "actual"? At the end of the day, all we saw in the cinema was a mechanical reproduction - only the word "actual" made the difference to us. You could have convinced us it was fake.

Not that I thought that at the time - that occured to me some four minutes through. And it wasn't even "Jesu, pass me a bucket", because there are some contexts where I know I have nerves of steel, and this was one of them. It was something like this:

I have some very strong, very ancient views about art, and I've never had a chance to properly test them. Let me explain:

Oscar Wilde fried my brain very early, with the concept that "art is useless". From that, and associated ideas of the aesthetic movement, I formed my own opinions which I today discovered are actually a form of modernist thought. Art is something not put to use (hence my hatred of realism/"message" movies), so anything can be art when divorced from its context. Everyone complains about the screaming groans on the Bakerloo line. It sounds like music to me, because I decide "this is music", and then suddenly there are cadences and rhythm. And it's here that I find my love of terrible, atonal music. And in my mind, this is associated with children. You know, how a three year old will get hold of a fork, and it's suddenly the best thing ever. I suppose if you've never seen a fork before (or a hat, or a ball...), it must be pretty damn exciting, and that's the joy kids find in life: they can see this beauty everywhere. And so can we all, if you start appreciating a fork as art divorced from context - it's lines, shapes, colours, forms, light bouncing off metal and shining. There's nothing intrinsically separating the sparkle of a fork from the sparkle of a diamond. To get back to the Bakerloo line, the adult commuter hears the noise and itches for the WD-40, dismissing it as painful and annoying. That's only because they haven't abstracted it out of it's context.

That's my position on art, in a nutshell, and I hope you followed it near enough. When I go around spouting things like "everything is beautiful", or "everyone is beautiful", it's not because I'm a big damn hippy. It's because 9 times out of 10, every time I see something my mind asks "is it art?", and then rearranges my thought until it is so.

I'd take this position to a pretty extreme extent. For my Sixth Form art project, I argued something similar and wanted to use images of 9/11 to prove my point. Not the black and white arty photos, just any photos. Clouds and fire are beautiful - its just the idea of what those photos are which is horrific. Understandibly, teacher didn't think that was such a good idea, and in the end, I did the same concept but on decaying buildings. A noncontrovertial version.

But you can't take an idea like that without pushing it far. And that brings me to the dog story, in which an artist chains up a dog in an art gallery and leaves it to starve to death "as art", the internet protests, and invites Unmutual to join a group expressing how much she protests. When viewing the inbox request, my gut reaction, my microresponse before anything logical kicked in, was "but...wow!" And then a sense of total horror, aimed mostly at myself and not the original artist. Felt dirty for days after that, but still did not join the Facebook group. This isn't a story I'm particularly proud of - it shows me in a very ugly light indeed. I only mention it to point out these beliefs are apparently innate. Or in any case, more innate than my hatred of animal cruelty.

So the question was: I'm about to watch some autopsies. How extreme can this position go? And if you're at all sensitive about hearing about said film, or me using my typical blase exaggerated cynical tone to discuss it, now is the time to click the little X in the top right and come back next time I write about kittens.

Answer: I need to watch some mondo. Because it turns out that yes, in the hands of a fantastic director, you can abstract the human body just like you can anything else. I feel strongly that, in his use of colour and close ups, he was trying to express just my position. So many of the shots you could not tell what they were at first - they were indeed just colour and shape. You couldn't even necessarily distinguish the live flesh of surgeon from the dead flesh. Turns out that yes, even here there is beauty. There was absolutely no context - no names, virtually no faces, certainly no politics or underlying ideas.

I also thought a lot about how else you could have shot the film - in order, from further away, with sound (what music could you possibly use?) or in detail like Channel Five's Celebrity Hysterectomy: Our Hands In Your Guts. I feel it was very carefully constructed so as not to be gross. As far as that's possible when you're watching a head reduced to a Gallifreyan skullcap made of actual skull. I noted that the first fewindividuals were old men. I would probably have naturally gone man, woman - the fact he didn't stood out. I think I would have felt differently about a woman - whether because I is one, or because female nudity is a bigger taboo (I've a feeling it would have suggested sexual violence automatically), or a white knight streak. And children go without saying. It also started with a body examination, which took me by surprise - I figured autopsies were gross-out scalpel affairs.

Turns out this was an act of genius, which eased you into the movie. Ultimately, there was all of the above, but I feel it got successively worse (according to my notes, men -> knives - > a child, but shot tastefully, from quite a distance - > women - > really unpleasant stuff you do not want to see, combined with faster editing). But even as it got worse, I felt you were better prepared to handle it - not desensitised, just calm about the process. I mean, is it really any worse to cut up a woman than a man, or a child? Not really. Does it really matter what it is they do? Again - not really.

Although there were some shots at the end which I do feel were too much - but was that the cumulation? And indeed, I felt the whole film was too long - it bothered me a bit to begin with, then not at all, but towards the end bothered me rather more. I felt more viscerally grossed out by the serial killer lecture - which I almost had to walk out of - even though there wasn't any remotely objectionable content. Perhaps because that asked you to consider death from an intellectual standpoint, and I feel here it was an impersonal artistic exercise. Interestingly, I'm having more of a reaction to it now as I write as I did while watching - my throat dries out, and then feels like it's coated with babybel - which suggests this is true.

I also felt vegitarianism changed things. Several people mentioned the aspect of meat during the seminar, which I had also considered while watching. Part of becoming a veggie is breaking down that wall between "animal meat" and "living animal". Once you break that wall, it's hard to replace, and it's not much further to connect "animal meat" to "living human" - I'd say it was impossible to turn your back on that. Very much in my mind as I viewed, and I was in part amused by everyone else's responses. Yes. Yes, exactly. Chew on that.

Was I affected? Was I not affected? I think my emotions tend come out in strange ways, not always attached to their causes (Is this repression, psychopathy, depression, or passive aggression? Or overanalysis?) I think a bit of both - I feel the film was too long, because there was a level at which I could watch it as dispassionate art but not for very long, certainly not the whole running time. And I did need fresh air and a chocolate milk afterwards. I'm feeling less well now, than I did a few hours previous. And I'm interested to see how it affects me in the next few days - whether the imagery fades, whether it matters more or less.

In any case, he's an inspiration - or rather, he does things I've already thought of doing, but proves they can be done. I'd rather beat rush hour than write about Window Water Baby Moving - the childbirth one - right now, but it achieves something I've dreamed of doing. Catching the emotions of an event on screen, without narrative or anything else. And I feel I've absorbed aspects of his style - i.e, lots of close ups force colour harmony.

Because I'm not a pretentious hipster at all.

Also. I just saw a brain scooped out of a skull.

UPDATE: read on for an exciting development :)

This weekend I intend to become an Origami brown-belt.

I've always held it that, in art at least, you should not do anything except for yourself. There's no point to grades, praise or fame if you're not enjoying it. I've taught myself to draw, to fold, to play and while the adulation is nice, it's purely for my own joy. Generally I am not ambitious. But there always comes a point where I want to prove I'm good among my peers. Not real peers - you're not gonna catch me jetting off to Origami conventions just yet. Just to try and achieve something that I know, within the field, is very challenging. It's not like it means anything more, it's just for my own personal satisfaction.

With the piano, it was the point I started playing Beethoven. Never mind that I'd been playing Chopin for years, and that he is arguably far more challenging - I wanted to play Beethoven! It's an aim I still haven't quite completed - my arms are too weak to do a whole sonata. This is the one I want to play:



Also, I adore Evengy Kissin. I feel sure that I would be a better pianist if I had huge gingery hair that bopped as I played. I had made it Chopin's Fantasie Impromtu, but I am way way off being able to even touch it, so maybe that will be my next landmark.

I've been in an origami blitz for a few weeks now, and I have been impressing even myself. Despite that, I am not very good at it - I'm not neat or patient, and a lot of the things I fold would embarass other people who knew what they were talking about. Origami truly is an art that is less complicated than it looks - this, for example, was very simple to fold once I got my brain around what it was doing. Yes that's one piece of paper, and yes it does bounce like a spring if you pull the ends. So as my origami challenge, I thought I'd have a bash at making Robert Lang's cuckoo clock.

A little background. Before Robert Lang came along, origami models were rated from Simple to Complex. Afterwards they had to invent a whole new catagory - Supercomplex - just to accomodate the leaps he invented. He was the first Westerner ever to be invited to speak at the Japanese origami society, and he's helped out on space missions using his origami know-how. Part of the glee of all this was his mathematical approach - he's invented computer programs which help distribute the model across the paper. For example, if you want to fold a bird it has four points - a head, a tail and two wings. Conveniently, a piece of paper has four points too, so folding one is fairly simple. If you want to do a Samuri Helmet beetle with six legs and three prongy bits, working out how to do that is a little trickier. Nowadays it can be worked out theoretically by computer.

(While we're talking about the amount of points that can be got out of one piece of paper, take a look at my favourite origami piece of all time. And no, even with the crease pattern, I can't comprehend how he did it either. Fans of Studio Ghibli might also enjoy the Catbus, though I'm more mystified by the comment "base is not box pleated. I only learnt how to box pleat yesterday, and my first reaction was "Oh! It looks like the Catbus!". So how did he do it?)

So. All I have done for the last two days is fold. Here's a picture of the finished product.

They don't call it Super-Complex for nothing. Merely attempting it has blown my mind. As I mentioned, I've learnt a new technique - the box pleat - which is basically a way of making lots of legs out of a regular piece of paper. The Cuckoo Clock requires you to start with a minumum size of 160cm x 16 cm, though mine is a little larger than that. Pre-creasing - putting folds on a flat piece of paper so when you start folding properly, all the lines are in the right place and the paper does what you want it to do - took me two hours. I went to bed, thoroughly exhausted. When you are working with over a metre of paper, you actually have to move an awful lot. The next day I worked solid from 10 in the morning until about 7 at night. For the first time ever, I understood why Serious Origami Masters use pegs when they are working. AND I AM ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH. Though admittedly, realising I had to refold half of it because I'd done it the wrong way around was something of a blow - as was refolding the middle section three or four times as it fell to pieces (that's when I got the pegs...) Last night, I stopped at fold number 113 - there are 216 folds in all - and the room stunk of stress. So far I am on the right track, but I'll be so disappointed if it reaches a point where I get stuck. It does happen fairly often when I attempt serious folding

If I manage to do it? It looks like my clock will be the size of two matchboxes. So if I succeed, I'm gonna do another one for my room. Twice the size and in expensive red-and-white paper. Wish me luck folks.

UPDATE: And it is done! Ultimately, I think it took me 12 hours - which is pathetic when you consider the pinnacle of origami achievement was folded in only 40. I confess to cheating a little on the penultimate step. A section I had to continually refold ultimately turned out to be very important, and because I'd screwed up the flaps which attatched front to back didn't really work. So I used six spots of glue to do what my misshapen flaps couldn't, on the basis that this was the fold that would break the model if it didn't work. The thing is, I can do it. Not very well, but well enough to give it another bash in a week's time and attempt to produce some art.

Last night I dreamed about parties. One in a wooden hall, with bay windows overlooking a huge lake and the sea - one on a boat with my extended family - one in the backstreets of what might have been France. I don't usually dream about going to parties, so what is my brain trying to tell me? Freudian dream analysis in the comments please.


Finally, I've got my first partner for Swap-bot. She lives in Tokyo! She has a five month old daughter, hates Disney and loves dark chocolate. Rather intimidatingly, the person who is sending me an Art Card is the coordinator of the swap - from Missouri, a fan of good cinema, piano music and Josh Groban. So damn cool...

Finally, I've found my new home on the internet!

Some of my most treasured posessions are other people's junk. A particularly special one is three photographs I found in a second hand book. They are the creepiest things I've ever seen - a sunny day in a hotel garden, or maybe just a very nice cafe, with an assortment of old women smiling at the camera. I wonder who they are and where it was taken

It gave me the idea to start a website where you could trade the photos which just haven't worked with strangers, instead of cutting them up and binning them. Would make for an awesome collection. As it happens, I don't have the know how, but as I investigated the idea I ran across http://www.swap-bot.com/.

The basic principle is the same. You trade stuff with internet randomers all over the world. But the topics are much broader than merely second hand photos - sticker sets, postcards, gift-boxes, handmade crafts, basically fleur de lys (i.e. "whatever you desire..."). I don't know anyone who doesn't like getting exciting mail, ergo I don't know anyone to whom this idea would not appeal. I'm too skint to get properly involved. One of the exciting things is the international angle - your gift could end up in Venezuala, and in return you would recieve something from Budapest - but as partners are chosen at random, anything larger than a post-it note could potentially be pricey to post.

And then I came across Artist Trading Cards, and it was like The A-Team all over again: love at first sight. They are little works of art on a Pokemon-card-sized canvas. You make your own then trade them with others, for a completely unique collection. It's perfect in many ways. I have a mania for collection, but real trading cards have always depressed me for their crass commercialism. Suddenly, Panini decide that Master Regeneration is an Ultra-Rare card, so the unscrupulous can flog them for £25. In contrast, this is at once valueless and beyond value. Plus, I get so posessive over my art. I've made drawn presents for several people in the past, then been unable to give them away. Hopefully sending creations all over the globe will deal with this issue.

So I've spent a blissful week fufilling challeges set by the users on the site. I've already made four for four different themes: Water, Mascarade, City and, less pretentiously, Giraffes. I am particularly proud of the Giraffes, my favourite I've made so far. They are looking out over a sky of stars, inspired by Lewis Klahr's short film Altair which I watched for Film Studies last year. And if that sounds pretentious, well, you might as well call King Crimson pretentious. Seriously, though - I was merely ambushed by how much I love the imagery in that film while also thinking about Giraffes, and that combined to create a thing of small beauty.

My thinking is get making while I still have access to craft stuff and then posting in England, where the postage will be a bit cheaper. It's really nice having an prompt to art too. By Christmas, I should have a shiny new collection!


In other news? Variations on nothing. I'm elated that Janet Fielding has been asked to do new Doctor Who audio books, and that next year will see the first three Fifth Doctor + Tegan + Turlough + Nyssa adventures since 1982, but I'm sure you won't be. I'm feeling morose about the death of Roger Delgado. It was a nasty accident which happened some 30 years ago, cutting short his tenure as the Master, but fandom as a whole has never got over the shock of it. But I'm sure you won't be. I think I am going to make the origami cuckoo clock now...yours, fannishly.

Last night, I decided to rewatch Watchmen instead of going to see X-Men:Origins.

I justified this by saying "well, Rorschach could wup Wolverine in a fight anyway..." - and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to illustrate this fight. Ignoring, of course, that the two can never exist in the same universe - not only because one is DC and the other Marvel, but because Dr. Manhattan is emphatically the only superpowered being in Rorschach's world. More than anything else, the idea was art practice in the world of the garish graphic novel.




Yet...Rorschach is obviously resourceful, has a talent for tactics and refuses to give up under any circumstance. But he's still human, and can be defeated by humans too. Within the Watchmen universe, Manhattan is obviously the most powerful hero, followed by Veidt. After that, well we could argue all night.

But Wolverine is superhuman, and presumably the world's coolest guy presents no more threat to him than the world's coolest termite. His senses are better, making him faster, and his strength and stamina are probably better too. This is even before you get to the fact he's Edward Scissorhands with a bad attitude.

He has been properly trained in combat - although Rorschach's unpredictability on that front is also one of his greatest strengths, so maybe that would balance out. He has the advantage of being able to heal quickly too, although the jury is out about just how quick that is. And similarly, Rorschach is about as hardass - he walks through the Antartic wearing only a trenchcoat and fedora. Rorschach is a fantastic tactician, but I'd estimate Wolverine was approximately equivalent.

What advantages does Rorschach actually have? Well, if he was on home ground he'd have a little chance - Calypso has already suggested a rubbish dump, which would give him a lot to work with in terms of props and places to hide. Occurring in a ring or empty room, he would be dead (c.f. A.V. again). Wolverine is capable of killing people, but not as capable. Yet this doesn't stem so much from his hesitance as Rorschach's enthusiasm. He's also a nutcase, which can only help if you're fighting someone sane.

To be honest, his biggest advantage is me leaning down to him and giving him the Lady's favour to carry with him into battle. Superhero fights have a HUGE element of authorial intervention governing them, more than any logic. I hold up as examples two of the great, great Batman novels: Hush and The Dark Knight Returns. In both of these, Batman bests Superman. Now, you can argue in one Superman was being controlled by Poison Ivy, and the other he had been weakened by a nuke, but the point still stands: strictly, Superman should have such an immense advantage he could win every time. Thus comic book authors can and do just tweak these things, and yet I hate comic book canon and its contradictions and refuse to be a part of it.

Initially, the problem was "can Rorschach could beat Wolverine in a fight?" Now, my pretty four-colour fantasy has evolved into "can Rorschach survive Wolverine in a fight?" If he stood and fought he'd be very dead, very quickly. His only chance would be to run for it, and get Wolverine into an improvised trap of some sort. And Wolverine is not as dumb as he looks. One of Wolverine's defining characteristics is his tendency to go bezerker, so if R. got him mad enough, maybe he'd stop paying attention enough to give R a slight upper hand - but he'd still need some way to survive while all that took place. I can visualise quite well the pair tearing across an urban wasteland, with Rorschach bouncing up buildings and staying just out the way of those claws.

I'm now sorely tempted to do an X-Men marathon, purely to size up Wolverine and work this one out - and if it does evolve into him tearing our favourite masked avenger into shreds, well, at least I'll be able to get his fighting style a little more personalised than the generic sketches I have at the moment.

So, folks, today's question: who wins? I do intend to draw and ink this one, so your votes count! And there's a comic book precendent for this too, when DC got readers to phone in to say whether they wanted Robin to survive or not. Curiously, they didn't get the answer they were looking for, and next week's issue saw the Joker batter him to death with an iron bar then blow him up. The worst thing is, I'm not exaggerating: I've read it, and it's shockingly nasty.

So who would triumph, and importantly, why? Add any important details, ideas or thoughts, and I'll incorporate them. Ideally both characters should survive. But accidents happen.



While we're talking about Watchmen, I dug up this great piece of art. I'm amused to see the artist has done exactly what I did with Rorschach, which was instantly give him an iron bar to work with. Rorschach vs. Batman? Now that's a close call, which Batman maybe would win - they're about equal on the smart, tactical, urban, batshit crazy front. But Bats is wearing body armour. That's the basis for that argument.

But the curious thing is the art is actually leading into a comic series called Multiversity. Quick lesson on the DC universe - there are 52 parallel worlds, created by "alternate version" characters. So Earth-3 Superman is evil, on Earth-172 Superman is Batman's adoptive brother, Earth-1938 in which Superman has averted WWII, an unnamed Earth where Superman is both black and president of the USA etc. Instead of just treating these like the one-shot absurdities they are, they've been incorporated into canon. Periodically, they've had matchups and crossovers featuring several of these Supermen interacting, and thus the same for all the other DC characters. Multiversity is a miny series focusing on seven of these worlds, featuring a plot somehow linking them: no one really knows anything yet.

Except the news regarding Earth 4, and that poster. Now Earth-4 is the designated home of the characters DC bought from Charlton Comics: the Question, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Captain Atom, and so on. If any of those names seem familiar, it's because Alan Moore originally intended to use them in Watchmen before DC realised most of their characters would end up dead and/or nuts. You can still see their very real influence: I've read the first volume of The Question, hated it for various reasons, but was creeped out by the Rorschachyness of it all.

And Earth-4 is one of the worlds that is going to be used. The phrase "Watchmen 2" is being bandied about, incorrectly, but it's still going to be an interesting exercise. They're pretending that the style of Watchmen is part of the internal tone and consistancy of Earth-4, so while you're going to be watching Question and Atom running around there, it is going to be very much the same universe with the same rules. Or, as Grant Morrison puts it:

"I thought it would be interesting to pick up on that sort of crystalline, self-reflecting storytelling method, so the mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I'd construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!"

Didn't think anyone would be so mad as to breathe on a sacred cow like that. Calypso has mentioned that she'd love to see a Minutemen spinoff: so say we all. But we learn everything we need to know from those slight hints in Watchmen. We don't need or, indeed, want it. It's a self contained entitity. Although I'm tempted to do some really corny old-style comics with them.

It's the closest thing we'll ever get. And I think, as a concept, it is fascinating. Bring it on! But I'm gonna wait for the trade...

PS - Wikipedia tells me Rorschach is also a municipality in Switzerland. If ever I go, I will buy so many tacky souveneers!

Am I excited? Phoar!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have just discovered something about Art with a capital A:

Always draw things which disturb you.

I should have worked it out earlier, to be honest - I like art which is troubling, distasteful or downright disturbing. Rather, I like art which makes those things into a form of beauty. Landscapes, say. I hate landscape art, because if you've got a terrific view, you've got to work pretty damn hard not to make it pretty. Now true, ace photography/painting can express the actual facts of the view, but also convey the emotion of being there - make it magical, overwhelming, cold, or whatever. But my point still stands.

I tend to draw nice things: fanart, people I know, charming ideas I have. And they're all very lovely, but in retrospect I don't know why, when everything I like about art is running a dangerous line to the distasteful.

And I do have several very taboo topics. The thing is, one after another, I've drawn them by accident, and they're some of the best things I've ever done. In other words, it's the upsetting and tasteless subjects that make the most impact in my art as much as anyone else's.

These aren't tasteless by other people's standards, I hasten to add - only my own concepts of things which shouldn't be drawn.




Quite at the top of this list is Dorian Gray. I mean, god damn - nobody should try to represent him in art, and I always detest people who try. I've got 37 editions of the book, and for each and every one which attempt to show him on the cover I roll my eyes. I'm not necessarily averse to creative images - his shadow on a wall, his back as he leaves the room - but an actual, front on drawing strikes me as something which shouldn't be done. As you've no doubt already spotted, mine's to the left. I have no bloody idea what posessed me, but I was just sketching and then ten minutes later, quite by accident, there it was. I am still in a state of confusion. But I did like it, so when I got it home I GIMPified it.


It remains one of my favourite things I've ever done, and I justify it to myself because it's an impressionistic picture of the ideas surrounding him, not meant to be an accurate representation. The original idea was for it to be all pussy and bubbling, like rusting metal streaked with green decay. But I got lost along the way again, and discovered this charming sepia effect. I think of it as one of Basil's watercolour sketches, but the red paint gives it an aspect like blood. It's about Basil, really.



On my wall in front of me is a sketch of Patience, dead. I've no qualms about spoiling you, because frankly anyone reading this blog is highly unlikely to ever read the two Doctor Who novels in which she cameos. She is actually one of my favourite ever topics to sketch, and if ever you catch me doodling a barefoot being in a clingy white medical dress, with long hair and an enegmatic smile, it's almost certainly her, because I do it all the time.

Pay attention class: in the screwed up canon of the Doctor Who novel, the Doctor is the reincarnation of the Other, a mega-powerful Gallifreyan who, along with Rassilon and Omega, invented time travel and founded timelord society. I hate this, by the way, it detracts from his character to be this super-godlike. But before the Other *pauses for breath* gets disenchanted and throws himself into the birthing room of a looming house so his biodata is absorbed by a new loom, and thus the Doctor has some of his DNA, although he can't quite remember it - before all that crud, he has a wife, and that's Patience.

Which brings us to Cold Fusion, in which the Doctor meets Patience again. It's a brilliant dynamic, because they both sort-of know the other is the most important person in creation, but they can't quite remember why. Lance Parkin, author, even manages to basically get the Doc laid. Admittedly in a shared telepathic communication, but I've still no idea how he gets away with it. But somehow it works, and Patience remains a divine, wonderful character.

So I enjoy drawing her a lot. Particularly with the Doctor, because of a line where Tegan observes his hand is accidentally lying on her knee. Therein lies the challenge - two people who're that close, but don't know they're that close, yet it comes out in all these subconscious ways. It's trying to express that accidental intimacy in a subtle way.

The image in my mind is set on the train journey as they escape from Scientifica. He's just rescued her, and they're sitting next to each other. He's looking out of the window at the snowy view, and she's asleep next to him with her head on his shoulder. She's been rescued from a hospital facility, and is wearing one of those thin white medical dresses, so he's lent her his jacket and she's sleeping under it. And on the seat, their hands are just resting against each other.

It's a perfect image in my mind. The sense of it being completely natural and relaxed is something I'm finding hard, however, and that feeling is the key to the scene, so I anticipate having to do a few more versions until I'm satisfied.

I've given up once or twice and done straight out cutesy doodles as well, complete with chibi smiles and hearts. But, spoiler alert for the book you'll never read, Patience ends up getting dead; so I was equally suprised as with the Dorian doodle, to find that appearing on paper. Again, perfectly. Again, more movingly than any of those attempts at that stilted train scene. I suppose art needs to be more organic than pre-planning. That one's not on the web yet, chiefly because I want to collect together my mass of Patience sketches onto a single page, but it is on my wall and I'm very proud of it.



The Naked Flame has never been a taboo topic, not even remotely. From day one I've been doing doodles of Lord M whenever I have space - recently, I intended to do portraits of all 40 major characters (I gave up at about 12) and was pleased with the results, both of my characters and other's. And even within it, I've always plunged headfirst into the troubling scenes. I suppose it's a result of me trying to capture them with the same intensity that they play in my mind. I've done them by script, prose, music and imagery. Never poetry, but if I thought that would work I'd try it too. I've drawn Lucy and scenes surrounding her final fifteen minutes, more obsessively, I think, than anything else ever. Recently that's slowed down, and I think because I've actually hit on the image I was aiming at.


So dealing with tough topics here has never been a problem, really - it's always been part of the experience. But I've never drawn Silver before, not properly. I give it a go every now and then, in a half hearted way. I don't really have the space or, right now, the will to talk you through her, so long as you appreciate that she's possibly the most important person in Lord M's life on account of something she did when they were both very young. He's carried the confusion around, and musing about her becomes a very destructive habit for over a decade, and then when he comes back to confront this thing hanging over him, she's dead. All very Shakesperian. It's a lot more complicated than that, and relates very closely to Lucy, Lancaster, his father, his wife, the whole lot of them. I'll explain it all someday if we have a very long train journey.

Which is why she's so hard to draw: because she's an ideal. She's one of the few characters of mine I've never "spotted" in real life. She is that "perfect summer when the sun always shone", personified. She's youth, and love, and happiness on dancing ankles. She is the ultimate cause for everything which has followed in his life, which means she's weighed down with symbolic baggage not only for the reader, but for him personally. I've never seriously expected to draw her because she's such a mess in my head - laughter, bells, "She moves through the fair" and "Lady Moonlight", wild flowers, sunlight, Kate Bush (no, I've no idea either), springtime, cool water, running, - a mass of imagery instead of a person. You can do it in prose, certainly on film, but unless I was to attack a canvas with a hosepipe and eggshells, I'll never be able to do it justice.


I just did, by the way: the natural punchline. Hence the blog. It's there on my wall, and is most peculiar. I am definitely going to GIMP this one, because I'm overwhelmingly impressed with myself, if a little disturbed. But that will pass. Like Lucy, Patience and Dorian above, it's not a true-to-god copy, more of an impressionistic stylistic thing to express the clingy concepts and ideas. And even though I'm still reeling at the sheer idea, I think people are going to find it quite lovely, especially if I don't explain the exact context the scene is drawn from and let them assume it's meant to be an undine.

Unfortunately, this has started making me consider those truly terrifying things - there are one or two - which I would never even think. They're as fictional as those characters above (which is to say, not at all), but the idea of putting them on paper is just intensely bizzare.