This is the first of a series of line drawings done in last year and intended as a bit of a departure from my cartoon stuff. See how I hesitate to call it “cartoon work” in an effort to make it sound less than it is. Cartoon work is work, but it’s hardly coal mining. Any sort of drawing is a kind of therapy as most people who do it will tell you. So I’ve been in therapy since the age of about 7.
This is Beaumaris the home town of my late father and it’s in North Wales. It’s on Anglsey, an island often left off the map of the UK for reasons of artistic laziness. The map makers just could n’t be arsed to do that fiddly little bit on the top left corner of Wales and no one would notice would they?
I did a few of these line drawings last year with the intention of then colouring them to make into prints. You can see some of them here . This one is still a work in progress and I’m not sure if it will make the cut, or I may have another go at it. I do them under the name of Edward Davies, which is my serious artist’s name. It is my real name, taken from my Uncle Edward, who was a doctor and helped deliver me all those years of therapy ago, but it generally resides beween Paul and Davies.
The colour is added digitally and I try as best I can to make them look like it’s not! I find that digital work can have a bit of a flattening look, almost atiseptic. I’d like the final thing to have an energy and immediacy that the line drawings have.
I’m hoping that posting these will encourage me to finish them. There will be one a day for a week. Feel free to comment, I hope you like them. If you don’t then please don’t tell me, or I’ll have to go back into therapy.
