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.)

PhD sketchbooks: A4BE (March 2021 - 11/8/21)

This one contains a few of the final illustrations for the introduction and conclusion of Disorder, and preliminary work for (U)KA. (Timelapse video here!)

These were for the introduction of Disorder.

Left: other notes glued in (I like to use the other side of the page). Right: see my process for creating the illustration of that specific group of boys here.

Left hand page: redesigning Mr Walker and his family! I looked at my designs for William's associates and (me being a twit) was surprised to see that they were all white. I needed them to reflect more inclusive ideas about history (it's for everyone, not just people from one specific demographic) so I started redesigning a couple of them. (I still have a lot of work to do here, and this sort of work, learning about how to represent people, is never going to end - there will always be new things to learn, and that's a good thing.)

Left: Mrs Walker. I have no idea (yet) if William Walker, looking-glass maker of Drury Lane, was married or not, but I'm assuming that, since he was a reference for a schoolmaster (our lad William Shaw) then presumably he had a wife and children. I have no idea what the Walkers looked like, anything about their family histories, or anything else - these are my interpretations, which I changed (see above caption) to be more inclusive. 

Left: John Wigginton, chandler - like the Walkers, I have no idea what he looked like or what his family history may have been. (I also don't know what he did. There's a few different things a chandler could have done: he might've made candles, or supplied equipment for ships, or ran a shop selling stuff more like groceries, like the bread and ham that Oliver Twist's new friend buys at the beginning of this extract.) Another one I redesigned! If you make visual representations of your interpretation of someone, rather than written ones, you have to think a lot harder about how you depict them. There's things that you can avoid very easily in writing, such as someone's skin colour, that are harder to avoid in drawing. (At least, I'd imagine that's the case - ask some writing-based historians what they think about it.)

Extra illustrations for one image at the end of Disorder, showing how all the characters would appear in each others' visual languages. I also used it on this post to promote the book (well, free PDF download rather than a physical book, but you get the idea oh also GET IT HERE).

Left: visual language test for (U)KA. Right: for that page at the end of Disorder.

Left: notes on Danny Gregory's The Creative License (Hyperion Books, New York, 2006). Right: one of the final bits of Disorder, which is still comic but bleeds into the conclusion. Both: visual language tests for (U)KA.

Left: rant on orange sticky notes about how access to history should not be restricted to the professionally trained, because people from outside the discipline can have valuable insights and fresh ideas and all sorts of other good stuff - interdisciplinarity is the future!

(U)KA visual language tests.

More playing with that woodcut-looking drawing style, this time with Ann and the ghost version of Charley. 

Right: using the faux-woodcut style for sequential narratives (comics!)

Left: another visual language test for (U)KA. I decided not to include those weird marks in the finals - allow the audience to add their own if they want. Right: blackout not-quite-poetry using printouts of the Hull Packet's coverage of the ophthalmia trials (article titled 'Cruelty of a Schoolmaster', 10 November 1823).

That's the penultimate A4 book - return to the sketchbook index to see something else.