Imagining tides and tides of tiny people

The main thing that I draw that people in real life seem to enjoy the most is tiny, fidgety figures. I've filled little notebooks and full pages, mostly with fantastic characters. All of them have been drawn with my favourite pen.

Its sort of a ritual at this point. I definitely find it soothing. I think it sits part way between full scale art and the forming of letters and numbers, maybe, and that scratches a sentimental itch for me. More than all that, though: it's bloody good practise.

I've always been more interested in quick and expressive work. I've always believed that finishing things is the best way to learn from the experience of making them... I just didn't always have the follow through to do it with every. Single. Sketch. So I had a graveyard of sketchbooks filled with spidery and unloved pencil drawings.

Well, if you scale the project down it becomes significantly easier to finish. And it also turns out to be dangerously more alluring to come back to again and again...

These things, I found, were quick enough to do and finish and move on from before you had time to second guess anything. And the practise scales up.

Because proportions are, uh... proportional. If you can draw a little guy that's 4cm tall, you can scale that up. It just takes longer to add the details that sell it. But the lessons you learned from finishing that figure are real, and they still stick.

I have become a tiny figure evangelist. You should draw something really small right now, just to see how it feels.

My current project as of writing this blog is my biggest so far- it's five meters of tiny figures (with some larger illustrations interspersed), going on show at the Castell04 exhibition at Castell Caernarfon. There are 20 artists exhibiting in total, and it's been very exciting to be a part of that. I'm hoping my tiny figures will be a suitable love letter to the castle and the region I've called home for most of my adult life!