Prescription, Mixed Media on Canvas, 2021

I’d found during lockdown that my drawing skills were atrophying. From life, I’d default to putting down whatever symbol I found easiest to draw, rather than translating what I was seeing in the real world. This created a vicious cycle that left me with an impoverished imagination and rusty co-ordination. This may have been an inevitable consequence of insular pandemic life, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t form better habits.

I decided to commit myself to drawing as often as possible, whenever I found myself outside and among other people. I tried to keep myself to loose paper cut to varying sizes, to not get too comfortable with any orientation and to be portable (I kept the pieces in a little wallet). After some testing I found matte medium gel to be the best and most archival way to fix paper to canvas, with the added benefit that they could then be addressed with whatever other media I saw fit.