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: 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: SBF (24/4/21 - 9/10/22)

Small but chunky - this one originally had a nasty plasticky cover, which I pulled off and replaced with boards that were slightly too small. The spine nearly came off and I had reattach it with paper tape but it's otherwise doing alright. It got me back into doing (bad) bookbinding! (I made the next two SB sketchbooks.)

Timelapse video of this one here!

Drawing about the passage of time

Left page: things redrawn from Bad Form - that's the (rather awful) graphic novel I did for my final major project at undergrad, and it was about the experiences of a fictional boy at Bowes Academy, and featured some of the same characters (but they were quite different then). Right page: William having a Sad Time

Preliminary work for one of the more striking images in the conclusion of Disorder. Final version in A4BE.

Then some character design work for (Un)Known Associates

Markmaking experiments with a very short pencil - satisfying to make, not quite satisfying once you're done with them - surrounded by written rants about the historical sublime, not needing certainty, meaning being projected onto things by the observer, etc.

A lot of stuff in here is scrabbling around for a visual language for (U)KA. And then it happened.

Bottom of left-hand page: "FEELING STUCK IN MY WORK like the drawings aren't really going anywhere and are just doing the SAME STUFF over and over again FFS which means it is time to experiment again TIME TO LOOK AT WOODCUTS"

I found this book and was much delighted

Tarot references sneaking in (Mr Gairdner has a sword, a disk, a cup, and a wand on his floor today)

Then sometimes I was greatly vexed about things

Vexed at historiography

Vexed at third-person writing/ "objective" viewpoints

Vexed at disembodiment

Vexed at the use of passive voice in academic writing

Vexed and gleeful and also a clown

Then I started looking at W. G. Sebald to see if he had any potential strategies I could borrow - seeing how he constructs narratives and joins things together. (I've only read The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo and I mostly enjoyed them but there was a lot of melancholy and one or two unpleasant book hangovers, you know when you stop reading but you're still in the book and everything you encounter is viewed through that book)

Sebald included images smack in the middle of paragraphs which I think is brilliant (and I do it in my thesis) - this challenges how you read (do you look at the image first, do you jump over the image and finish reading the paragraph first, do you pause word-reading in the middle of the sentence and read the image)

Sebald also makes strange sideways links between things. He jumps conversationally from one topic to another through weird/ apparently insignificant/ seemingly random connections. Sometimes there'll be hints of the next topic hidden in the one before, then he'll pick up that thread and go elsewhere with it. That's what this spread was about - working out how to do that using images.

An idea for using three separate (U)KA cards to make a single image, which isn't quite a single image because the character is shown in three different contexts. (The original pose is adapted from the end of SBA.)

Also other stuff

Notes on Dada manifestos and Tristan Tzara's writings. While I didn't explicitly use these in (U)KA, I'm probably going to refer to them again for some postdoctoral alarum.

Analysing things in some other sketchbooks. These are from SBD.

Fruits of vexation (good name for a band) - an idea for a comic about the popular perception of historians/ the discipline. A few bits of this turn up in some other sketchbooks. It's gonna be postdoctoral! (I've got to make a list of my postdoctoral project ideas, it'll be as long as any of my limbs)

Then some business with the four classical elements and their associations, which I used in developing (U)KA. 

I decided I needed to focus a bit less on my main four characters (William, Bridget, Ann, and Charley) so I listed a load of people William (probably) knew here. I chose four of this lot and assigned one element to each of them (similar to the whole William/Reason and Charley/Imagination business in A4BB, or Ann/Beauty and Charley/Sublime in SBA.)

Initial ideas, and trying to work out Mrs Young's face.

More Mrs Young. I thought Air would be an appropriate element for her - we know nothing about her, apart from her name appears on William's adverts (I haven't seen her anywhere else yet). Air is about clarity, language, communication, precision, reason, etc., but can sometimes find it hard to express emotion. As one of William's references, she would've (hopefully) been able to communicate with prospective clients and tell them what a good school Bowes Academy is. This could've become a bit tricky post-1823 (when William was the defendant in the ophthalmia trials) but she's still listed on his card of terms c.1831.

Richard Seaton, William's agent (until, for reasons that I do not know, he was replaced by Jacob Metcalfe around late 1833/ early 1834). I associated Seaton with Earth, which is about finance (he's William's agent and had his own business for a while, and went bankrupt a couple of times), material considerations, comfort and provision, practicality and reliability (you want those in an agent), but sometimes tends to stick in the mud. Earth is also linked to some bull symbolism (such as the zodiac sign Taurus and St Luke when involved in the four evangelists/ tetramorph situation) and I think it was bovine products that Seaton sold. I wanted to draw him as strong as an ox!

I associated Frank Addison with Water - which is about emotions, relationships (he married Bridget's sister Mally, so he's brother-in-law to Bridget and William, and he and William turn up in documents about trying to start a Methodist chapel in Bowes), methodical (he's a tailor), regeneration, cleansing, but sometimes lacks direction (I don't think the chapel got too far, but I don't know what happened there, but I wouldn't be surprised if it involved one gentleman's mismanagement of his school, health and safety William, cough cough 👀)

Workings-out while I was doing the final artwork for the cards (in other sketchbooks)

Interspersed with the occasional vex

By looking at the cards I'd drawn, I realised I'd missed out a load of people - including the other ushers (assistant teachers) at Bowes Academy! 

Left: thesis layout notes. Right: another rant

Rant from previous image continues. Main theme of this rant is that a representation of a thing is not the thing itself.

And this sketchbook ended with a load of ideas for making 3D objects. Some of them link to some of the imagery and visual languages in Disorder. 

Alrighty, that's it for SBF. Head back to the sketchbook index for another!