“autonomic”

Another piece about being ground under by work. Hmmm.

Rather than dwell on that, the other week over a few beers with cuz Mike, we were talking about journals that you have to do while studying anything artsy. Talking about how artificial they were, and how often you had to fake it by working backwards from the finished piece.

Flicking through one of his art books, looking at some insanely good prints by the Japanese master Hiroshige, I was inspired. Here then, is the faked journal of how it went.

The treadmill as a symbol of pointless drudgery turns up fairly regularly in my drawings. They always seem very flimsy though, with me the one out of control, not the treadmill.

My professional workload keeps veering to the ridiculous. I wanted to get the crushing weight and unstoppable juggernaut feeling of my days. Oddly enough the first couple of ideas were agricultural!

Then the austere greys of that snowy print joined it all together. Weight. Repetition. Toil.

On the technical side, I wanted to work big, bought some full sheets of Canson and a mount board to tape them too. I wanted the tractor to be big enough to be more than a suggestive blob, and get some zen value from raking my pencils across a larger expanse. The mountains were another example of something looking easy because of its simplicity. Those effortless brushstrokes of sumi-e take a lot of effort!

Anyway, here is my homework handed in, a little late.