Elephant Boy

I love the way our minds works – how we can’t help but see human or animal figures in random patterns or in vegetable or mineral structures. Some people love staring at clouds (oh yeah, I can see a giant poodle in high heals) but I’m always fascinated by the weird things that can be made out in some types of bathroom tiles. I could stare at them for hours. At least that’s the story that I’m sticking to as to why I spend so long in the bathroom.
And why am I waffling on about such nonsense? Well, I was looking through some of my old sketchbooks the other night and I came across a couple of thumbnail sketches of a bit of twig (top image) that I’d picked up somewhere. Looking at the drawings again they reminded me of some sort of John Merrick type creature so I did a quick cartoon sketch and here’s the result.

US Sketchbook Tour

I’d like to thank Holly Howe for telling me about the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project, which I’ve just signed up to be part of. Basically, the Brooklyn Art Library in America are inviting artists to submit completed sketchbooks (on a variety of themes) and these books will then be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the country. So far six states, Brooklyn, Austin, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago have signed up to play host to the show. But it is likely that more states will take part before the exhibition starts in March 2011.
After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be bar-coded and available for the public to view.
As I’ve not yet received my sketch book I obviously don’t have anything to show so far (the image above is of a drawing that I did a couple of years ago) but the project’s website does offer each of the participating artists a webpage in which to show off their work – and here’s mine.