SKETCHING MEMORIES

 This Caricature is from 1974, sketched in my little pocket notebook from memory. I was trying to capture characters from a few months earlier, aware that my life was moving on. Shortly after that I started on the road to bricklaying via government retraining courses.

I think this guy was called Arnold. He pitched up every night in a pub called The Signpost, in Pitsmoor, Sheffield. They said his hands were locked into place from holding big heavy tongues in the steel foundries. A man of few words. Steady as a rock.

Scary to think I might be older than he was at the time I drew this. We lived in different worlds for sure, but rubbed shoulders for a while, and he made an impression on me.

Colorising done on my phone just now. How I wish I could sketch like that now. Maybe I can but I would struggle to find that easy fluid manner, AND ... it looks like him, feels like him.

Time

 

Late 70s, towards the end of my bricklaying days, a couple of years before I volunteered to work in Zimbabwe. Standing next to the dragon gate

This was my pilgrimage to Barcelona to see the work of Antoni Gaudi. Not quite so famous as he is now. There were no queues to get in. But he had been my hero since before I went to university, based on a book from Barnsley public library.

We studied history of architecture in art classes during my last couple of years at school. That's where I learnt about the classical orders and the different phases of Gothic. I got to know who Mies and Wright and Corb were.

But Gaudi is the one who really captured my imagination. Books are all very well, but that visit, after several years of manual building work, really made me think again about what he was up to.

It's not very clear in this grainy snapshot, but I was wearing red and green shoes, plus a red and green zig-zag belt. I had two pairs of those shoes made, with the colours reversed. It was more economical to cut the leather that way. And of course I wore them as mismatched pairs.

Socially I was very shy, but I had this quiet, rebellious streak. Go figure. 🤔

 

My little notebook from 1974. A period of transition. The illusion that somehow my rebellion against convention would transform the world was fading into a journey full of twists and turns, a willingness to learn about the world.

I spent a few weeks on a barge. Picking up loads in Hull docks, down the humber to Goole then south. Unloading sacks of butterbeans that brought my forearms out in a rash. Hard physical labour can teach a quiet, sheltered boya few things about reality.

But my head was still in the clouds to some extent, as I scribbled away in my little pocket book. Recording thoughts and images in my own naive way. Life in the raw, spiral bound and red felt tip pen.

 

 This must be from 1993 when I was fresh back from Joburg where I completed my architecture studies (years 5 & 6) This project was drawn up by hand, but I did these perspective studies using Autocad.

There were only 3 computers in the office and as the new recruit I didn't get one of my own. I did have a PC at home, so these may have been done there, memory fails.

Not long after this I became the office "computer guy", introducing a customized menu file for Acad and use of Xtree for file management. We didn't have windows at this stage. You had to type in the full file path to open a file. I used a batch file at startup to create substitute drives, so we could have a "J:drive" for all the jobs, and a "K:drive for standard blocks.

Thirty years ago and full of naive hope for the digital world. No networks or Internet, just floppy disks. A dial up modem with primitive email followed soon after, and all those big heavy, stand-up drawing boards disappeared one by one.