Spring.

Has the thaw begun? I question as the frost seems to have gone - replaced with the dampness that begins to touch on the coming of spring. There is still the wateriness of the colours, an opacity to the grey of the sky and stone and reluctance of the greens to put there heads above the parapet; but there is the sense of the wrinkling of the nose, the squinting of the eyes and all the other actions associated with the shaking off of hibernation.

With the questions come some answers, but normally more questions. Of late I feel I have found something in the paintings I produce - maybe not genius, but... something - something I feel is progress, that speaks? These feelings encourage me to strike out, to press on with the projects I have in mind - both artistic and commercial (and at some point the one is always bothered by the other). 

As I write this, at the start of my fortieth year, everything seems tinged with risk and excitement. The question looms - have I missed my moment, or have I reached my 'natural' age? Whilst I hope and believe it is the latter, the possibility of the former likes to jump up and down in my mind - and seems to be wearing a hideous neon yellow and green lycra combo.

My renewal of purpose, coupled with changes in my work mean I intend to roll out my blogs weekly, extending my ramblings into a longer format - though as with life I can make no promises. As we enter a season tasked with regrowth - but muddled by the push-me-pull-you approach of mankind to the environment, I do seek to find the sprouts of future plans and projects, and perhaps make of them bubble and squeak. Ideas plop and bubble to the surface, transforming into gases - creating a miasma that alters perception; slowly the cloud pulls its faces and what was momentary crystallises into thought. There is something reassuring about this process - the opportunity to take speculation and fragments and to construct a solid frame around them, to create a concept from idle wonderings.

Conversations start to prop words up against each other - buttressed and overlaid with images, colours and serendipity; so it is that experiments, notes, sketches and doodles begin to stretch out and build to new forms, compositions and narratives. Maybe it’s not a thaw, but I’d say it’s definitely time to think again.

Speeding Up.

[This is an older post - written but not posted before the recent weather, but I kinda like the poetry, so I'm posting anyway]

Our world speeds up imperceptibly. Things to do becomes a to do list; getting from a to b becomes process, becomes strategy - a plan, a way of life. Soon the moment you live in seems to be only a staging point for where you need to be next - and that only a brief respite for your next summit.

The weather bomb hasn't hit here yet, there is only ice in the wind. Extremities suffer frost, and the crystal glaze dusts the bravest of plants, whilst cold light pales hedgerows and rocks that are left exposed. For months the weather has been hidden by darkness, suffused in jet that has played with lights that pierce through the fog from ferries and cargo ships that promise journeys of adventure and hard living. 

I have not thought of what surrounds me fully for a while now, though I have made some attempts to capture it in pen. This morning I find myself stopping again, reaching out to the dangerous beauty of the moment and asking my brain to stop its chessboard plotting, to dally on the now, the sensation of chill in my hands, the body heat trapped inside my scarf and coat, the rosy tinge spreading from my nose and ears - even the suggestion of sore throat in the top of my mouth. 

The moment brings it's solace, a release of the senses that gives depth and meaning to each brief experience. The pure brilliance of sunlight full of wintry potential beaming over and gleaming up from the river as we pass. Buildings seeming to stretch that bit higher - flowers reaching for the sun, basking in the granite of their stone, the memory of their geological heritage flooding back; whilst the iron of the bridges snuggles into its crusted solidity thinking of days when it ran free in its molten youth.

Here is a reminder of the creeping paralysis of the future; that with each step further you think, the more you lose a sense of where and when you stand; than by focusing on the process you become myopic and don't open those eyes enough to let in the light, to see the shades and nuances around you. And with that I need to life my gaze from this phone and look out of the window for a while.

Humidity.

Mist has descended, but the temperature remains spitefully hot. There is water - vapour in the air that swirls around, but somehow fails to cool or refresh. The humidity tricks us into layers and preparation for winter, then laughs at our coats and asks have we so quickly abandoned the summer? Things feel condensed, squeezed as we prepare to bring in the harvest, and preserve our supplies for the year's end.

Today is a day of errands, picking up, dropping off, a whirlwind of making sure I get things done. The next weeks have cluttered into arrivals and celebrations that deserve and demand my time, so that now my calendar no longer has dates, more a series of scribbles and arrows. In fact I'm actually working on two calendars - the one I write things on, and the one that exists in my head - the one with a lousy memory and a worse sense of humour. It's always the second calendar that pops up when something new happens, and immediately it begins to flick the pages back and forth until the dates and days are no longer connected, but dance around like opponents in a game of tag - just out of reach. 

And I am me. A trite statement I know, but it brings me to my nexus - I hate making mistakes - I hate problems that could have been solved, the error stays with me and annoys me further. So when appointments begin to get close, or clash I get nervous and frustrated. In truth I like to organise things months beforehand, asking me to do something a week or two out - especially if it means rearranging things means that I will be unsatisfied with the result - I will feel I am letting somebody down - even if it's just because I had to ask if it was okay to do the new thing. This gets worse when there's more people involved - after all the chance of making them all happy is not high. So I find if I can't have things organised from, say - origin to oblivion, then my only other option is to be ruthless - to declare this is what I am doing, and if it fits great, if not... well that's too bad. And sometimes, for a few glorious minutes I can do this, but generally, no, not so much, so my life becomes about making sure everything can be fitted it.

Maybe this is why I am fascinated with the complexity of Spider webs at the moment? Even on wet days they stretch out, and sparkle with droplets in the mist. Spiders seem to be able to bring all the elements together, and then just sit there, still, relaxed, prepared... I guess I'm not really a social animal.

Spiders.

In the crisp light where the morning tries to decide on the sort of day it wants to wear, the crystal silk of spiders' webs kaleidoscope the air, softly shifting the plains of existence, carving a disjoint in the horizon. 

I'm drawing spiders and their webs at the moment. Painstakingly recording the strands that leap from surface to surface and catch like the lightest trapeze in mid-fall. Dancing over the Web, plucking at each chord the spiders work their way - predators of vibration and breeze.

It's hard to say you like spiders - in the same way that I can say I am a cat person say; something about them is alien, too other in the way they move, and you suspect they are just too clever by half. Yet I do admire spiders; the beauty, the simplicity and the complexity of the Web they have created. The skill in the construction, and the ability to create such things so quickly and assuredly. Of course the purpose is predatory - and scarily effective, but even here I feel a moment of awe, they after all can spend their energy on the Art, after that food takes care of itself. 

This morning I take photos of a really big one - a spider, by the garage, in the hope I can study it later. It sits in the centre attuned to each vibration, each tremor, waiting to cross dimensions to meet its prey. Then later I find myself looking down the tracks and noting the way the wires, the trees, the horizontals of the bridge all serve to stretch out across the morning, to weave their own Web, their own series of connections that take the thick translucent milkshake of the morning and carve it into the moments of the day.

I stay very still, and wait.

What I did on my holidays.

The morning train approaches, bringing my micro-tour of a holiday to an end. I find a smile breaks through my mouth, and I reflect on what has been.

The past ten days have taken me through Scotland from West to East, through touching private moments and a dramatic history - both long gone and in the making, through scenery that has inspired and weather that has gloried and inflicted in equal measure.

Beginning by Loch Lomond and culminating at Melrose Abbey I found myself chronicling my journey in sketches (which you can see in Drawings), indulging in a landscape that talks to the imagination and taking the time to immerse myself in a history that just won't quit.

But we began on a very intimate level, with the wedding of two of our good friends, who found in the secluded beach at Crear, where the sea crashes over rocks and falls spent upon the shore, where the water stretches out to the future whilst the mountains of the islands seek to clutch it in their grasp, where the sun bursts through the drama of the clouds to sparkle upon the dancing waves, the perfect expression of their love.

In the celebration of their happiness I found time to reflect on the joy I have with my wife, and though full of the bubbles that accompanied that festivities I found my heart beating a little harder that day. 

We then travelled along Knapdale and the banks of Loch Fyne, tracing the mountains peak and trough to the Loch, observing the land and water vie for dominance in the arm-wrestle of the landscape, and stopping for delicious Lobster and scallops for lunch (and samphire, we had samphire too!). Here the vastness of the Lochs form the centre point of the view, but the framing of the mountains, with the forest in their mottled greens and blacks draws the eye to image after image of stunning beauty. 

Moving eastward we spent the night in Glasgow, taking time to sleep, to eavesdrop on the almighty row - and reconciliation of the couple in the next room, and to get out into this bustling city that draws upon such a varied heritage, and is full, like most of Scotland, with the debate about independence. 'Yes' and 'no' stickers abounded, and on the day after the second debate opinions filled the air(waves), and although our waiter thought the football might be the reason for an empty restaurant, we had to duck out of the way of a camera crew - anxious to avoid 'B roll' fame. When it comes to the issue of independence I have a selfish reaction: if I were Scottish I would vote yes, but as someone who would be stuck in England in that event I fervently hope they vote no, as I know that what is left would be much the poorer.

In the morning we took ourselves to the Cathedral quarter to look over the Necropolis - a graveyard of staggering scale and a multitude of faiths, not just a monument but a veritable city of the dead. Nearby we took in the museum of religion and the Cathedral itself with its Gothic struts towering upwards, and it's chapels descending lit by the colours of the stained glasses that surround the building. After some sketching and a cup of tea, we set off to Airth, from where we would take in Stirling Castle, Deanston Distillery and Bannockburn. 

Stirling Castle is right where a Castle should be. Amongst flatlands rises a rock from the bowels of the earth to form a mountain. Nearby is the easiest crossing of the Forth, and so naturally on top of the rock someone put a castle. You can't blame them, even if there hadn't been wars of territory, power and independence a rock like that is crying out for a Castle on the top. So there is.

The tour around the castle takes you through the days of Scottish Kings and Queens - including the recreation of the Great Hall and the intricate detail of the Stirling heads, through the history of the Castle as a military base, and gives you views over the surrounding lands. The Castle feels regal, wrapped in the Court of the James' and the legend of Robert the Bruce, yet strangely vulnerable - maybe reflecting the amount of times it has been occupied by opposing forces - a victim of its strategic and symbolic value. We had no time to explore Stirling itself, but driving through its Stuart streets to navigate the one way system, we knew we would want to come back to eek out more of its history and ambiance.

Deanston was a birthday surprise. Tucked away up water from Stirling it occupies the site of an old woollen mill, the Victorian building still standing, and forming the base of the warehouses that hold the maturing whisky. There is a romance to the distilling of whisky that always captures me, from the flow of the water to the smell of the air, I find myself entering a new world of scent and taste that stimulates the landscape of my mind. We moved through rooms and scents from the honey of malted barley to the thick sweetness of raisins as the liquor distills and finally the deeper bass of the warehouse as the whisky matures and gives it's share to the angels. If I were an angel, this would be the duty I would angle for - which may explain why I am no angel. After a quick taste we left, cradled in my arms a sixteen year old malt with a deep toffee char to complement the burn of the alcohol as a birthday present.

The memorial to Bannockburn has been refurbished, with 3D interactive displays that present the views of all classes involved in this battle for Scottish independence, taking you through the events in depth - and letting you fight them over again. Fitting then, that as we went through to the coffee shop two older women were deep in discussion about the forthcoming referendum, and odd that they were declaiming the virtues of the union. Outside the centre is the monument itself, with a statue of Robert the Bruce just beyond. As I approached a swam of camera flies appeared around me, so in a fit of peak I retaliated with my sketch book, determined my composition would try their patience more. The statue is dramatic, but at Caroline's prompting the view over to Stirling castle, as it rises from the land around, is more so, so I drew that too. Caroline has come to love her kindle, which makes up for my tardiness in such situations.

From Bannockburn we meandered our way over the Forth road bridge and along the coast of Fife. By the side of the Firth of Forth the sea stretches its way inland, playing tricks with the horizon as the other side appears and fades as the Firth widens. We stopped at Lower Largo to glance at the dreams of Robinson Crusoe, and to have a late lunch, before making our way to Anstruther which was to be our base for the night. Here we walked along the harbour as the weather broke for the first time in the week, provoking waves and sending us scurrying to the pub, where a whisky and gin later we left as the place was closing (or was it just us?) and went for world famous fish and chips - Prince William's favourite don't'cha'know! 

The next day we set out for St Andrews, a beautiful town that once was the centre of the Scottish Church, but now gives it's time and energy to Golf and it's university. The ruins of the Castle and Cathedral took us into the past, and the coastline gave us understanding of why the town became such a centre for religion and learning. The presence of Golf was ubiquitous, and the democracy of the access to the old course sat somewhat oddly with the luxury mini-buses that took aficionados from links to lunch and back again. Settling in for lunch ourselves we took ourselves to a student/foody deli and dined on nostalgia for our own student days, and a lovely smoked fish platter.

Arriving back later that day, we took a night time stroll along the harbour wall. Buffeted by the wind and comforted by the crashing waves the town took on a piratical feel and contraband filled my mind as we headed towards the single light that flashed at the harbour entrance. The black sea washing onto the dull light of the sand was the world negative, and like the imp in Twoflower's camera I worried I would run out of black.

Our final day saw us fall foul of the map in Kirkcaldy, finding an exhibition of the Scottish Colourists by luck more than skill. Having escaped the one way system we made our way back across the bridge and down via Melrose - determined we would see all the resting places of Robert the Bruce, and here was buried his heart. Once again I sketched the composition of the ruins whilst Caroline walked the history of the place, before we finished our trip to Scotland with a cup of tea, and the reflection that all the places we had been to demanded a return to explore unfinished business. A reflection that stayed with us as we wove our way through the Cheviot Hills and headed home to sleep.

The train door opens, and I raise an eyebrow, here begins another journey.

Something's coming.

The remains of the wind hurry through the morning. Trees bristle angrily, air currents brush past deep in conversations that they guard jealously. 

There is sun in the sky - clear blue escaping from the mumbling of clouds overhead. Purple spreads across the sky, as if foreboding, and there is drama in the air today. 

The sense that an alien has landed, or a creature has broken through from another dimension creeps over me as I head towards the station, and once again everything is transformed as my mind shifts reality the six degrees to change my perception. 

The warmth of summer surfs on the breeze, while the cracks of summer in the clouds suggest the world has fractured ready to let in new and dangerous forces - a sea change perhaps; and I find all this speculation, well, delightful. 

It's not that I haven't enjoyed the good weather; more that the contrast serves to accentuate it's purpose, while today's tension gives something new, something that stirs my inner whimsy to suppose 'what if' and 'maybe', so that train tunnels enter new worlds, bridges traverse implacable chasms and the end of the line is a new adventure.

Maybe it's returning from a holiday, maybe a new idea is building, but as the tension in the shoulders releases my eyes are happier to lead me up the garden path, or better yet, into the secret garden that has no discernible path, and so no prescription as to how it will grow.

And now summer seeks to reassert itself with bursts of light, and there are renaissance moments where the earth meets heaven and they look each other square in the eye and take away something of the other; some sort of cosmic reassurance if you will? 

The day is set up for its balmy summer and I stretch ready to relax into its embrace, and yet the wind creeps around the edges, it remains, ready to change the game whenever it tires of the rules.

A bend in the river.

Summer daze. Blinding yellow drowns the morning. Crowds of tourists throng on the riverside, some straining to look down the Thames, others hustle towards the mother of parliaments - a strange sense of disappointment awaiting them. The river winds it’s own sweet way, the shipping performing a complex maritime quadrille.  

We are released for a few days. There is the sense of freedom about my shoulders - even as I carry my own tourist bag, and shimmy through the oncoming hordes, anxiously glancing back to ensure that I haven’t got carried away and lost her in the traffic. We meet up with my Father and head down to the jetty. 

Today we are set for a voyage down the Thames through memories and geography. Each one of us seeks something unique: the recapturing of the past, an understanding of history, a feeling for the building blocks of a country. Settled in on the top deck we meander down the river - past tourist spots and the climbing architecture of a land rediscovering its value to the chagrin of those who have lived there for years. 

Bridges pass overhead, Victorian fingers that play cat's cradle supporting the life and industry of the city. Urban sprawls into suburban certainty and now the country begins to sprout out of the banks, greenery bursting and draping dappling reflections on the water - nymphs and spirits that cannot be contained by their corporeal form.

I am filled with Constable visions - shades of green that are vibrant and full of the moisture that fills the English countryside; vistas that stretch tantalisingly out of reach as we climb upstream, and skies that are populated with a school of playful clouds that frolic in the Sun’s rays. 

Sketching moments as they happen, trying to capture a glimpse of such a glorious day in line, scribble and black and white. I find myself fighting time and motion as the boat carries on, regardless of my need to plant my feet and screw my eyes tight. Vital seconds fly onto the page in a bending perspective that follows the world that heads towards me.

For a glorious day we are part of an ancient journey, away from the day to day, able to indulge our imaginations, our memories and our whimsy. Actors and captains of industry look down from penthouses, poets tidy their grottos, old rock venues sing again, and ancient monarchs bestride barges with their fresh new wives, the stench of court intrigue following behind. 

I try to capture the now, but all the time I am distracted by the echoes of the past. 

Beautiful day.

It is a glorious morning. The sun casts it's haze over the sky and the hedgerows are verdant. I head off to work safe in the knowledge that the overgrown garden has been tamed, that the burgeoning jungle has been cut back and the summer evenings are mine once again (Although the cat, who had been stalking who knows what in the long grass is less impressed - tuna may be required).

On the train the sun flickers through windows and tree tops to animate faces preoccupied with the early morning. Cloudless, the sky is an ocean of possibility. I can taste the perfume of holiday, and the world around me takes on the veneer of patience and ease, a landscape breathing in, waiting to exhale and send me to who knows what? 

Only a random ulcer on my lip frustrates, adding an acrid taste of tin to the day, but I will open my mouth wider to speak, elocute with more precision and ignore the swelling that seems intent on giving my lip a head start on adventure.  

I feel strangely listless and calm, as if the knowledge of what is to come has given me a moment of zen in my everyday life; a moment of acceptance of the rhythm of the day. I am aware that this is a moment of recharge, that there is a painting that is close to its finish waiting for me, but for this moment I can take a little more time, let the sun set a few nights as I ready myself to go back. My electricity of panic has calmed for a while and I should look to the time off to make me stronger and more able to grapple with my practical needs and personal ambition. 

I must embrace my inner sloth for the time, until the moment when I look to the canvas and my annoyance at the line, or the sparkle provokes more than an eyebrow raise, but tingles to my hand and spurs my feet. The time is near, I feel the clench in my forehead, the meeting of continents that forms my momentary monobrow; for now though I will resist and rest.

Rallying cry.

The sun blazes, so I’ve put on my sunglasses - an achievement as they’re prescription and I constantly forget to wear then. I’m walking through the city centre, through town, wondering what this day may hold - my sketch book is burning a hole in my back pocket. The street is packed, people have come out for the weekend, and the weather. Amongst all the people I hear the beginnings of a chant. A memory stirs of student revolution and I look around for the source. It’s not apparent, but I notice police are standing at the corner of a street, and, with no other real purpose I follow the law.

Before I know it I’m stood opposite the rallying point for a pro-Palestine march. Now I have issues with the nuance of this millennia old conflict, but I’m damn sure the recent conflict has seen way too much death and destruction, and the reasoning behind that looks… well, inadequate to the say the least. I’m no Zionist, but equally I have enough history to acknowledge the horror and the debt due to the Jewish people, so any discussion of who did what and when will get messy. So I’m inclined to say the position that blowing up innocent people is wrong is possibly the best place to start. 

And there they are, a group of people grouping together to protest the bloodshed, to support Palestine’s right to exist and to ask the government to do more. Now although there are issues with in this grouping, on the whole I think what they are doing is admirable - and I’m more than aware of Britain’s place in getting this whole thing started, and how quickly we got out when it got tricky. So I start to sketch the assembly. There are a mix of people and ethnicities - white middle class parents with their children, Arabs and Asians devout or otherwise, men, women, and the obligatory SWP presence (which makes me feel strangely nostalgic). They are chanting, waving placards and banners, and there is the stark symbolism of carrying a coffin. 

As I sketch each new line and scribble I find something new - the mingling of the police, the nod of a head, who is organising - not just the people with the megaphones. Slowly I see the random groupings moving into position, finding a connection with the people around them. It strikes me I  am beginning to notice the people ‘among us’ and am pleased that this may link to a series of work I am producing (before admonishing myself for being such a parasite, and then rapidly coming to terms with that). 

Then I hear it. Someone over the road from me shouts: “Whose streets?” A banal question that pisses me off on so many levels. To start with the obvious it is a cry from the EDL, the implication being that our streets need to be defended - not from this group of politically aware, but diverse people - many who are senior citizens, but from the ‘tides’ of immigrants who apparently threaten our streets; I don’t know, maybe they walk around with pick-axes and pneumatic drills, so that when we’re not looking they can undo all the work our civic authorities do with paving and suchlike? A more considered answer to the question surely has to consider the basis of funding the streets, and then the notion of collective ownership. For if we are not to assume a collective societal ownership of the streets, then we need to reflect back onto the ways in which local councils gather revenue for these streets and are forced to conclude that the owners of the streets are tax-payers; but then we must also conclude that this ownership is not equal, nope - the streets are the property of those that have contributed most towards then, and must be allocated in such a manner. Thus when his compadre, (sorry friend - a word of Spanish origin is surely inappropriate here) shouts “Our streets!” I am tempted to ask for copies of his tax returns so that he can validate such a claim. If he can’t, we are back to the notion that the streets are a public thoroughfare, a place to meet and mingle, and for many of us a place to try and survive the night. Which also makes me wonder if it’s his bloody street could he not show some human compassion and help the people who live there!

By now I have finished my first sketch and moved ahead of where the march must go, to be able to draw more of the scenes to come - aware now that there will also be the presence of the EDL today - the dynamic duo having moved on to their own little soiree I’m guessing. The march arrives  by the Monument, and again my pen moves through the listeners, the speakers, and the throng of people that make this a public space - an open dialogue. Banners wave in the wind and the Georgian architecture becomes an amphitheatre. I am finishing a sketch, when a note of discord strikes up from around the corner, and I hear the bellow of the EDL. 

Nipping through an alleyway I find myself behind  this group, and again begin to sketch. Here they are gathered - ranged in front of a police line, somehow enraged at the gall of these people to consider the plight of people in a country thousands of miles away. The cheek of them to consider that we as citizens of the world have a right to be concerned at the deaths of children and innocents. At this point thought I do feel some relief, my sketchy knowledge of this situation is now, it is clear, more detailed than I thought, as the EDL seem to have a problem with the PLO - at least this should be Hamas? As for their obsession with the IRA, well my internal map nerd is now weeping. This is rage, but uninformed and, frankly a bit proud of that.

I return to the main square to see the stewards have rightly chosen to ignore the interruption, that the police are keeping both sides apart, and  that the speakers have more of interest for the marchers than the EDL. Once again I let my pen find out more.

The thing is, I get insecurity, I get hopelessness and frustration, and I realise that competition and crowding makes people tetchy - you don’t, can’t, always win. But when we start talking about not enough space, or the wrong type of people I get historical twitches and a massive sense of hypocrisy, living as I do in a country that made its fortune through emigration, through exploration and crucially through appropriation. An island people that sought to go away, to find what was over the horizon and sailed with the force of colonialism. We have much to answer for, and much is in the past, true, but as a country surely we have to make a virtue of this past and ensure that if you want to have British values, at the forefront are diversity, tolerance and acceptance. 

(The sketches are in drawing section if you want to see them, I've put them in order - for some reason I couldn't imbed them in the blog - sorry.) 

Anthropomorphism.

Getting the shape of the nose is important. It gives the structure to the whole of the face - not the head, but the face, and the face is key.

This is a giraffe, but it needs to speak out to humans - be something we can recognise a message in. And so we enter the murky realms of anthropomorphism, a realm where the danger and savagery of the natural world is transformed into the - obviously, cute and empathetic world of humanity. Nonsense of course! There is no more violent animal on the planet than humanity, but in order to identify with these animals we need to see our perception of ourselves staring back; so the face is important, because it is in the face that we see most of ourselves:- expressions of the mouth, angles of the eyes and the influence of eyebrows (even where there are none). This is what we believe the animal to be, our own projection of emotions and experiences on that of the natural world.

So here I am. I look at these images of animals at rest, at play, eating, sleeping, even running, and I try to see the story that calls out to me - the story that my imagination gives to this animal.  Transforming the animal into the human is not just a trick of line, or enabled by the addition of a hat or scarf, it is in the way in which the animal enters the human imagination and mirrors back what we want to see in ourselves. 

For me this is more than just the reference materials I look at, but especially in the animals I come into contact with. My cat has always been a joy to me, purely as an animal that can swear at you with a look. My mythology harks back to Kipling and 'the cat who walks alone', so my cat is wilful, stubborn, and clearly the one in charge of the house. It is not perhaps a startling original mythology - the reams of cards and books will tell you the impression is given to others too. It is, however, a self fulfilling prophecy as now my cat is wilful, stubborn and lets you know when she needs to be fed in no uncertain terms.

The cat eats, sleeps, hunts, feeds and repeats, but that is not enough for me, or for us as a species - we hunger after stories, after meaning, and so my cat is given impulses, desires, thoughts and cunning plans. She becomes deliberately provocative and demanding. So my last picture (and the next) has the cat luxurious in her sleep - but in one I look at her dreams, in the other, her ability to lord it over others.

Thus when I look at an animal to draw, an image to design, I am looking for a story and giving a bit of myself to the stance, the raised eyebrow, or the slack of the jaw. Then there's the ears, just need to droop a bit... no, that's not right - too dog.