By the time I started this sketchbook, I'd mostly sorted Disorder, and was beginning to think about (Un)Known Associates. Also getting into the historical sublime. (Timelapse video here!)
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| Back on reading Alun Munslow's Deconstructing History (which I'd started reading here). I left it alone for a while because I end up with far too many good ideas when I read Munslow, and sparks start coming out of my ears. Top of left hand page: two possible characters for (U)KA. A more polished version of the drawing beneath them ended up in Disorder - scroll down here to see it (it's very purple) |
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| More people who might end up as characters in (U)KA. Most of these began as observational sketches of people I'd seen in the wild, made in 2018-19, blended with the silly preliminary characters in IBI. Ethical business: they probably don't resemble their originals because when you draw people in the wild, you only get a few seconds to catch them, and what you do 'catch' is just your interpretation of them at a certain angle (and also reflects your capability with your materials, how engaged you are with the task, what you want to see, etc.) THEN this lot, drawn some years after the original drawings, are interpretations of those drawings (a bit like that game where you sit in a circle and whisper a secret in everyone's ears and it gets distorted as it goes around, except it's just me and my sketchbooks instead) |
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| Wondering about depicting a nasty version of William. According to some people (see Kirkpatrick, Fact v Fiction, p.98, p.100, p.105) he could be quick-tempered and vicious. I don't tend to draw that version of him because I'm too sympathetic towards (my interpretation of) him! Also I like using my interpretation of him to challenge popular interpretations of him as having the personality of Wackford Squeers, horrid schoolmaster extraordinaire, and I don't want to draw him being mean to some of the other characters. This is probably a thing I should experiment with. (Add it to the list of postdoctoral projects) |
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| Planning Bridget's final image in Disorder. |
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| This is when I started thinking about the historical sublime. I had a very minor existential crisis through thinking about the inherent meaninglessness of everything, including my own work (and consequently my entire existence), but pushed through it. The way to deal with this is through interpretation: you either interpret it as absolute horror, and accordingly descend into despair (ah! woe! I am nothing!), or you interpret it as a source of power: my work and my existence means nothing, so I can impose any meaning I want onto it, and I can change that meaning (or those meanings) as much as I like. You take autonomy and responsibility for your own existence. I'm going with that. |
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| Further considerations of the historical sublime, and ideas on some ways in which I could attempt to visualise it. It's a wonderful flexible thing when you start playing with it. Also, lower right-hand page, some ideas about doing a set of cards - which turned into (U)KA! |
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| First version of the historical sublime diagram - which is a load of words I found in what people like Munslow, Jenkins, and the like had said about it - and notes on Hayden White's Metahistory (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, this edition 2014). |
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| More notes on White's Metahistory, and a few graves to find in Bowes and Barnard Castle (planning for a trip) |
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| Results of said trip. Sometimes I draw when I'm out, but not on this occasion; it was just dash round and take photographs to work from later |
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| More of the same, and then developing some of the things I'd encountered into further ideas, such as for page layouts (that I never used) |
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| More of the above. Some drawings based on a cross seen at Gainford church, where Charley and Ann had their (legal) wedding. Also wondering whether to use gravestones to frame text in the thesis, which I didn't do because doing the layouts ended up being complicated enough |
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| Left: thinking about the dead versions of some of my characters - in some of my sketchbooks, I show Charley as a ghost, and Jane as an angel (read more about her here). Right: more notes on White's Metahistory |
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| More notes on Metahistory, and playing with metaphors and visualising stuff. On p.142, White says "To have suggested that the historian emplotted [their] stories would have offended most nineteenth-century historians." Apparently it offends nineteenth-century schoolmasters too. |
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| Left: trying to plan the thesis. Right: use of fantastical imagery to communicate the unreality/ fabricated nature of the narratives I depict, with specific reference to Remedios Varo. |
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| Left: I got annoyed about the phrase "This chapter discusses the [whatever]" because it doesn't literally discuss anything, like it doesn't nick my card and go to the shops - similar to how traces of the past don't tell us anything, they've got to be interpreted. Right: Dixon and Charley with Varo influence. (More on these in A4BF) |
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| Left: Varo-influenced images about experiences as a historian, when you feel like the people you're investigating are just out of reach. Right: making test cards for (U)KA, and three panels for yet another postdoctoral project. |
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| Ideas for illustrations for the thesis (I put a load of planning into that damn thing, a lot of which never went anywhere, such is the nature of experimentation) |
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