PhD sketchbooks: bonus content

There's some stuff in other sketchbooks! And elsewhere!

First, some things for Charley's pages in Disorder. A4 spiral-bound, tan-coloured paper.

Media tests. The one on the left ended up on p.2 in the final comic.

There's two pages in Disorder where Mary Ann and Charley communicate, so I blended their visual languages. More consideration of that in IBJ.

I've also got a big A3 sketchbook which I hardly use because it is enormous

Early visual language test for Charley's pages in Disorder

Ghost Charley

I drew this after a Zoom talk by Beverley Pilcher (who wrote Barnard Castle and the Cholera Outbreak, 1849, privately published in 2004) and this drawing was a response to that. I also put this image on my Instagram.

I tried keeping a book specifically for any information I could find about William's connections (right at the start of doing (U)KA) but I forgot about it after a while, so it didn't go very far. This one's A5.

I had a load of stuff on my wall for (U)KA and most of it ended up glued into this book when I took it down - my splendid supervisor Katie suggested I put up sticky notes with thesis topics on the wall, and I love sticking things on walls

Not a sketchbook, but a prototype publication - the definitions! Based on Frederick Dinsdale's Teesdale Glossary (1849) and Barlcay's Universal English Dictionary (I've got a copy c.1812, this one is 1835). Initial responses to Dinsdale in IBJ, planning for the illustrations in IBL, final illustrations in A4BF.

I know I said that's probably it in the previous post... but I think that these sketchbook posts might be over now. Right. Back to the sketchbook index here.

PhD sketchbooks: SBG (23/10/22 - 30/12/22) and SBH (1/1/23 - ongoing)

I made both of these books! (Timelapse video of both of them here!)

The cover of Small Book G (23/10/22 - 30/12/22) is a test sheet from (U)KA that I coloured on the other side using alcohol-based markers, so they bled through the paper and made strange indistinct shapes. Most of its contents relate to the thesis in some way.

Right: thinking about naming conventions for characters based on people in the past (referring to the actual individuals by their full name and surname, such as Charles Mackay or just Mackay, and referring to characters by first name, such as Charley); also some kind of diagram about connections with other works (which didn't make it into the thesis). (The (U)KA fragment in the middle is because I broke the book trying to open it for the first time, so I glued that in to fix it. Swipe through these to see the break.)

Left: woe and misery, thesis-flavoured. Right: thinking about image list for the end of the thesis.

Key words and such. THESIS THESIS THESIS I CAN THINK OF VERY LITTLE ELSE

Corralling themes in my thesis. I spent ages dealing with themes, rearranging bits, rearranging whole chapters, hunting for themes and trying different arrangements, over and over and over and over

Left: ideas I had while doing the above list. Right: realised I had a problem with some apparent binaries in character design, such as Ann/Beauty and Charley/Sublime (see SBA for earlier work on that) so I will be trying to fix this using multiplicity - further experimentation will hopefully result in other ways of sorting it out

Some of the people in (U)KA have scandals. And that's only the ones we know about!

Left: different Williams in Yorkshire schools historiography. Right: another possible problem with making characters based on real individuals - what would the subjects themselves think? (This comic ended up in the thesis)

Trying to use grids in thesis layout, thanks to my excellent supervisor KP for the idea

Doing a thesis like mine - you're not just typing things into a word processor and wrangling footnotes, you've got to work out how the images and the writing work together, playing with page layouts, working out how to use the programme (I use Affinity Publisher 2 which I had no previous experience with) - it's very involved and I hope the final outcome is worth it

Working out one of my chapter themes. I don't know how many different versions, different potential chapters, etc., my thesis has had - it kept evolving - but then I suppose that's the nature of this sort of thing?

Silly idea about using Major Arcana Tarot cards/ the fool's journey as a template for constructing a thesis with a linear narrative. Which I abandoned because it was amusing but would be a total headache to put together, and I was already considering thematic chapters (which makes a lot more sense) but potential fun and games for some postdoctoral project perhaps

More blasted themes. Sketchbooks are a place to work out problems, line things up, think on the page, etc.

Going over different sections of the thesis and trying to come up with drawings that I might need to make. Also some comparison of how I was at the start of the PhD (I had very restrictive ideas about what you could do as a historian, and then the History department at UoG introduced me to the joys of theory and an entire universe of fun) compared to now.

I got into the habit of making a new plan every week for what I was going to do that week on the thesis. I also make it lift books to make it stronger.

SBH (1/1/23 - ongoing) has a similar cover, but made from a print-out of William's card of terms from c.1831. This is also mostly thesis-flavoured. 

Left: I was unwell with a not-quite-cold and saw William in the bathroom mirror again (it happened a lot when I was recovering from my appendectomy, which was hilarious). Right: another thesis plan.

Went through my sketchbooks and made lists of all the most relevant drawings for my thematic chapters. 

Weird nocturnal incidents, notes on things I was reading, plans, and diagrams (which became the triangle diagram as seen in IBP, which ended up in the thesis)

Plans and ideas for bits that I thought needed turning into comics

There's a lot of spreads that look like this in this sketchbook - over twenty pages in total. Part of my strategy for dealing with doing a thesis: breaking work sessions into half-hour chunks, and meticulously keeping track of every change I made on the document. 

Left: silly two-panel comic done while listening to Teya & Salena's 2023 Eurovision hit Who The Hell Is Edgar? which made me wonder how William might have drawn, but there's no time left for any of that sort of thing (my deadline is at the end of September) but the word 'postdoctoral' is marching towards this conversation - but, through drawing that, I had some entertaining realisations about how I characterise William. Right: poses that I'd already used in thesis drawings

I think that might be it for PhD sketchbooks. There's still a few pages left in SBH for any last-minute things, but yeah, that looks like the end of that... To relive the ordeal, go back to the sketchbook index for more.

PhD sketchbooks: A4BF (September 2021 - ongoing)

Which is mostly finals for the definitions (photos of the prototype product at the end of this post) and (U)KA! (Timelapse video here!)

Furious about disembodiment again

Diagrams, trying to make sense of themes and such in my entire project, for the purposes of sorting out the thesis

Experiments done while looking at Remedios Varo's work

Left hand page: apparently the building that had been Bowes Academy later became a cafe. Right hand page: more Varo-esque stuff, that being the death (and ascension) of Mr Dixon for (U)KA, and Charley with too many mouths as an alarming metaphor for multiple voices/ stories and not finding the information you want where you expect. Preliminary versions in IBK.

Thinking about the Perception (which also appears in SBF) and which will be a postdoctoral project (comic? who knows) about how the discipline and practitioners of history are perceived, and what we're expected to do and to be like. 

Left: keeping track of which (U)KA cards I'd digitally processed (which got glued in much later). Right: things for the definitions, based on definitions for Dinsdale's Teesdale Glossary (see IBJ) and further pushing the idea in IBL with Barclay's Universal English Dictionary.

More on the definitions

Definitions again, and frames and spot illustrations for assembling digitally.

(U)KA finals

(U)KA finals for the cast list

Notes pulled off my wall - these were all relating to (U)KA

Extra images for the thesis. That one of Charley - I wanted to show him teaching but didn't know what gesture to give him, and then there was a knock on the door and I had to give a delivery driver directions to a nearby location - and then realised that my explaining-stuff-movements would be very useful! So I recreated them for my laptop camera and drew from the resulting images. Right: a diagram about my methodology. 

This one still has one page left in the back, in case I need to draw another big thing for the thesis. Other than that, it's the end of the A4 books! Find more sketchbooks in the index.

PhD sketchbooks: IBN (23/3/22 - 26/4/22), IBO (28/4/22 - 10/7/22), and IBP (10/7/22 - ongoing)

Investigation Book N (23/3/22 - 26/4/22) is filled with final illustrations for (U)KA! 

(Timelapse video of all three sketchbooks here!)

I drew the cards twice the size than they'll be printed. A lot of them are surrounded by extra notes (drawing is a way of thinking; by drawing these cards and associated sketches, I could have an explore other ideas)

Left: if I hadn't drawn that courtroom scene, I wouldn't have been thinking about it, and I remembered that Henry Benning, the local apothecary and surgeon who helped treat ill boys (and William) at Bowes Academy, had to accompany William and pals down to London in order to give evidence in the ophthalmia trials - that's, like, 248.5 miles away - nobody better get ill!

Right: one of the split cards, with two images on one card. 

Right: the Fool which is me with some costume reference to Joseph Grimaldi (the famous clown, contemporary with my case study) and some other clowns. Preliminary sketch version available in SBD

Left: the Perception (who turns up briefly in SBF) and who is from a project that I have not yet done because it's still in very early poking-the-ideas-around stages. Right: drawing the death of Mr Dixon and shock realisation! I'm drawing a bunch of cards about William's (Un)Known Associates, and I'm focussing on characters that I (think I) know more about. I probably wouldn't have realised that I was ignoring a load of people if I hadn't been drawing them! (Or intending on drawing them, but actually drawing different characters.)

Left: William upside-down again - while I was drawing this, I realised that the things that made him notorious (the ophthalmia trials and the publication of Nicholas Nickleby) are the main reasons why we know about him and why he is remembered.

Left: I found a brief mention in the Newcastle Courant (29 November 1828) about a road traffic collision that William and Bridget were involved in (at least, I'm presuming it's them! I've tried the parish register but I dunno if there were any other Shaws in the area) - it said, in full, “On Wednesday night, the 19th inst., as Mr and Mrs Shaw, of Bowes, near Barnard Castle, were returning home, a farmer’s cart ran against them, and upset the gig, and broke the springs and arms of the gig. Fortunately Mr and Mrs Shaw did not receive much personal hurt. The driver made his escape, and has not yet been discovered.” and I haven't yet seen it in any other Yorkshire schools historiography. Where had they been in Barnard Castle? What had they done, and who had they seen? Perhaps we'll never know! And that is nothing to be afraid of!

I did these two the day before another operation (I had two during the course of my PhD) - this one wasn't the appendix, it was something I'd needed doing for a long time - but the Star is about optimism and freedom and fortitude, and Death is about the end of one phase and the beginning of another.

Investigation Book O (28/4/22 - 10/7/22) also contains some (U)KA finals! But then it also contains a load of thesis stuff.

(U)KA workings-out, including a list of cards I'd drawn, how to arrange them on an A4 sheet for printing, characters that didn't appear in the cards (will have to use them in (U)KA2), how to arrange the cast list in the PDF, ideas on Jacob Metcalfe, and some other bits

More (U)KA workings-out. 

Thesis drawings! Freehand, like the vast majority of the rest of my sketchbook drawings. Comparatively few across my entire corpus of PhD work have preliminary pencil lines before I add the ink. I wanted my thesis to vaguely resemble a sketchbook, so this freehand type of drawing is going in.

Some of these stayed in the thesis (such as the ones on the left-hand page about how history is not done compared to how you make your own representations and interpretations and that).

Left: entertaining metaphor about using traces of the past, etc., to bring the dead back (which I can't do because they are dead and I can only make interpretations of them). Right: this one stayed in the thesis; despite liking the roughness of these freehand drawings, I edited out the extra lines around Wackford's legs and William's shoulders in Affinity Photo.

More thesis drawings. Sometimes I joke that I am a terrible 19th century father to my thesis; some of those comics ended up in the thesis itself.

Investigation Book P (10/7/22 - ongoing) is mostly thesis stuff. 

Left: ideas for physical artefacts tying in with Charley's visual language in Disorder. Right: some drawing about subjectivity (based on a rant from SBF) that didn't make it into the thesis

Potential cover designs for (U)KA

Thinking about modifying Bridget's characterisation (bit late in the game? POSTDOCTORAL HERE WE COME)

The triangle diagram ended up in the thesis. The two panels underneath it did, too, but the right-hand page didn't, as I thought it was spinning away from a topic I wanted to stay on.

More ideas towards drawings for the thesis, this time about using my own body as reference for William (which I am sure some more traditionally-minded historians would sniff at with great contempt)

Reworked historical sublime diagram

More final thesis drawings

And that is it for the Investigation Books! (Back to the sketchbook index here.)