Investigation Book N (23/3/22 - 26/4/22) is filled with final illustrations for (U)KA!
(Timelapse video of all three sketchbooks here!)
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| 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) |
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| 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! |
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| Right: one of the split cards, with two images on one card. |
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| 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 |
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| 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.) |
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| 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. |
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| 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! |
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| 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.
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| (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 |
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| More (U)KA workings-out. |
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| 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. |
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| 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). |
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| 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. |
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| 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.
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| 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 |
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| Potential cover designs for (U)KA |
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| Thinking about modifying Bridget's characterisation (bit late in the game? POSTDOCTORAL HERE WE COME) |
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| 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. |
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| 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) |
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| More final thesis drawings |
