3: Experiment #1 - Caricature - 'the pub bore'

The aim of this experiment was to caricature somebody drawn from life, in order to express something about them or what they represent; or change the way they are received by the viewer.

The primary observational drawings were done on an early (October?) drawing 'trip' to the St Pauls Tavern with James Baily. I hoped I might find a drinker to draw - there were unfortunately only about six people in there (including us, sitting in the window with our sketchbooks, which made it a bit awkward). Still, I did a couple of drawings: 

When I got home I decided to take the character on the right in the second drawing (above) and see if I could draw him again in a different way. He didn't strike me as a total scumbag but he was doing a fair bit of 'reminiscing'; perhaps a bit of a windbag. 

I had been reading some of Ralph Steadman's memoir and so decided to take cue from the great man and make him look fairly horrible. Steadman has rarely if ever done a flattering drawing of anyone; below, a 93-year-old whisky distiller from his whisky book, is about the kindest Steadman drawing I've ever seen: 

This one, some kind of nasty tycoon, is more familiar Steadman:  

I was after something halfway for my pub man. Steadman's key weapons are physical distortion carried off with a venomous line, deliberate contrast of tone/colour and white space, and adroit design and composition. His medium is generally consistent - black ink and splatter, limited colour. I went in first with pen and brush and black ink, like Steadman, which is something you can't easily do outside the studio. It took me four goes before I got a face (top left) that I liked, and I had enough room to finish the figure: 

I then cleaned it up on photoshop: 

And finally added some colour: 

This was quite a fun drawing to do, this character is definitely a 'pub bore'. There is more dynamism in this drawing which in turn adds dynamism to the character - he appears more active. This chap is actively boring. 

2: Proposal

There is a nice page from a book of 20th C prints I have which summarises this project's aims effectively, of two very different drawings by George Grosz:

"Work made not necessarily on the spot may be more effective at showing and exposing underlying social and moral issues. The practice of the 'artist as reporter'... doesn't just rely on direct 'on the spot' observational drawing."

Gary Embury,  Witness - The Reportage and Documentary Forum, Falmouth University 2014  

The best way I can summarise my objective with the Research Experiment is to refer to my work across the two major projects this year as being variants of visual journalism. With the FMP I have broadly approached the work as a news reporter might - primary evidence gathering, representation and selection of visual facts. With the Research Experiment I will aim to produce work that functions as a comment article or feature, as criticism, satire or commentary.

I intend the starting-points for the experiments to be themes and people observed through drawing done on location. I had considered this project to be a place to experiment with general political comment work but subsequently felt that this could potentially become too broad and unfocussed. The 'test' for the experiments will therefore be the primary drawings - and vice versa. As Paul Hogarth writes in the introduction to his book The Artist as Reporter:

"Satire and documentation are, after all, merely different sides of the same coin." 

I hope this project will allow me to experiment with ways of expressing feelings and observations about the world that can perhaps be difficult, or impossible, to express when drawing representationally from life. I suspect my natural approach as a cartoonist will be to use humour - specifically caricature - rather than, say, the activism through pictorial narrative employed by an artist like Sue Coe. However, the approach remains similar, as Coe is quoted in Witness:

"It starts with direct seeing of some event that is disturbing, and needs the light of day to shine on it, or an attempt at illumination... what can you show in art that is not shown? What is important to say at this time? What is your mission?"

It may well be that the project's eventual successes and failures rest on this - whatever it occurs to me to 'say' at any given time this year, and what experiments I devise to express myself. However, it is worth remembering that I have, I hope, longer than the time-frame of this project to grind my axes fully - and that this project should best be viewed as an opportunity to whet the axe-blade - or at least not blunt it completely - rather than attempt to slice all of my enemies into bits. That sounds a bit Game of Thrones, but it's true. It is impossible to say all that one wants to say in a work of art - what is important is that it successfully says something. There is a nice quote in a Saul Steinberg book:

"The activity of drawing is a search for an image that captures, illustrates and synthesises a vision. The vision may be something external, something physical, or it may be integral, moving towards the intimate and the psychological. In Steinberg's case it is a dialectic between both; he describes the world and mixes it with his personal melancholy...basically thoughts about man's way of being in the world and his skill in understanding and improving a context for living." 

Which is a fine ambition - for a lifelong career. If I scrape the surface during this project I will have done a good thing.

1: Strange Beginnings

Here are some of the fun drawings and collages I did at the beginning of this project, without much of an idea of how I was going forward. Most of them are just media experiments really, with vaguely political themes.

This is a collage done inspired by Hammersmith flyover.

I drew these studies watching the news on the day Maggie Thatcher died over the summer. I arrived at a decent caricature of the Iron Lady in the top right (appropriately).

The Fat Comptroller, with his bag of dollars.

I was thinking about some satire about bankers, so had started to draw some 'greedy capitalists':