Illustration Friday - Sacrifice

Another oldie from my darker college days! It was inspired by a musical piece by John Tavener and although the title escaped my poor old brain a long time ago I do remember it had something to do with religious sacrifice so I've added the quote from Yeats.

Looking at it now it has occured to me that in the last month I seem to have come full circle in my art work especially with the Whispers set, although the subject matter has changed (I'm not quite so gloomy now!) and the techniques has improved somewhat - if gel medium and photoshop existed when I was at college things could have been very different! I've also found old sketch books from back then with ideas, poetry and doodles that go somewhere to explain my obssession with windows amongst other things and the artistic muddle that I've been living in is finally beginning to unravel. There is one glaring large problem though. Although I am enjoying rediscovering image transfers and being nostalgic about where I come from blah blah blah it is not going to get me very far in the long run. The missing link? Drawing.

I turned to collage because my drawing style wasn't fashionable back in the early 90's. I loved pre-raphaelite and art nouveau and my art at the time reflected that but to my St Martin's trained illustration tutors at college it was naff and cliche (and they were probably right) and I struggled trying to fit into their idea of illustration. So I put down my coloured pencils and picked up the glue stick instead. Now however, I'm finding that collage doesn't always do the job and I need to get drawing again. But I'm still stuck with the same problem, I don't have a style, so it's my mission to find it. I've got a new sketchbook/journal and a new pen and I'm going to stop worrying about how awful everything is (which is the scaryiest bit for a controlling perfectionist like me) and see where it ends. I sacrificed my drawing for someone elses idea of style, now I'm going to get it back!