David Atkinson | Personal Drawings | candid
Setting out as a student in the late 1960’s I could see that there can be a conflict between commissioned work and personal work. To a large degree I have separated the two although there are influences going both ways. This is true of many illustrators and their personal work. To me it seemed folly to put all one’s creative energy into commissioned projects when the over-riding demand is one of co-operation.
The personal drawings are mainly done in pen and ink, using a Pelican Graphos Pen (no longer in production - picture here) and Rotring Isograph pens. Mostly the work is black and white - colour was only added because an item was of a certain colour, never to make an image ‘beautiful’. Although this procedure has its own beauty. The drawings all had a narrative quality and ended up in a world that was an ‘illustrative fine art’, which for some critics, created difficulties. Nevertheless, I pressed on and developed various themes, some of which are to be seen here.
Themes developed from a spirit of enquiry in an effort to understand. The growth of a drawing through the flux of the mind’s objectivity and subjectivity, and the sliding mixture of the conscious and unconscious meant that the final outcome was a result of process rather than planning - a defined contrast between personal work and illustration. Topics ranged from the haphazard breeding of mongrel dogs, to molecular physics, to Machiavelli, to the notion of accuracy in drawing, and so forth.
From time to time the drawings went on exhibition; The Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, The Festival Gallery, Bath, Galerie Lucien Durand, Rue Mazarin, Paris, The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, etc.
The growing use of my illustration work from the late 1980’s meant that time to concentrate on personal projects became limited, but writing this in 2016 and collecting the work together for this website, there is a renewed urgency to get to grips with this personal work, having arrived in the final zone of life…
Thank you for your interest - the different themed sections are listed below:
Earlier Work
The Mongrel Dogs
Machiavelli
Photographs of 3D projects
The Stages
Particles of Faith
Satie’s Faction
Accurate Drawing
Drawing without Category
Setting out as a student in the late 1960’s I could see that there can be a conflict between commissioned work and personal work. To a large degree I have separated the two although there are influences going both ways. This is true of many illustrators and their personal work. To me it seemed folly to put all one’s creative energy into commissioned projects when the over-riding demand is one of co-operation.
The personal drawings are mainly done in pen and ink, using a Pelican Graphos Pen (no longer in production - picture here) and Rotring Isograph pens. Mostly the work is black and white - colour was only added because an item was of a certain colour, never to make an image ‘beautiful’. Although this procedure has its own beauty. The drawings all had a narrative quality and ended up in a world that was an ‘illustrative fine art’, which for some critics, created difficulties. Nevertheless, I pressed on and developed various themes, some of which are to be seen here.
Themes developed from a spirit of enquiry in an effort to understand. The growth of a drawing through the flux of the mind’s objectivity and subjectivity, and the sliding mixture of the conscious and unconscious meant that the final outcome was a result of process rather than planning - a defined contrast between personal work and illustration. Topics ranged from the haphazard breeding of mongrel dogs, to molecular physics, to Machiavelli, to the notion of accuracy in drawing, and so forth.
From time to time the drawings went on exhibition; The Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, The Festival Gallery, Bath, Galerie Lucien Durand, Rue Mazarin, Paris, The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, etc.
The growing use of my illustration work from the late 1980’s meant that time to concentrate on personal projects became limited, but writing this in 2016 and collecting the work together for this website, there is a renewed urgency to get to grips with this personal work, having arrived in the final zone of life…
Thank you for your interest - the different themed sections are listed below:
Earlier Work
The Mongrel Dogs
Machiavelli
Photographs of 3D projects
The Stages
Particles of Faith
Satie’s Faction
Accurate Drawing
Drawing without Category