This is the last set of pages from Notebook Ethel. Now they’re all up I’ll have to update it’s homepage.
It’s been really interesting going through an old book like this and systematically posting everything I can. I have more, so after a short break I’ll begin again on Myrtle.
Notebook Ethel, spread forty. Garbage writing, Cornish undergrowth, and office dog drawings (three varieties). 🌿🐕✍️Notebook Ethel, Spread forty-one. Kitchen still life in biro, Clifton windows, garbage writing (obscured) and @3dtimmy’s coat. 🥛 🏠 🧥Notebook Ethel, Spread forty-two. Kitchen still life in biro, Clifton windows, garbage writing (obscured) and @3dtimmy’s coat. 🥛 🏠 🧥Notebook Ethel, Spread Forty-Three. Drawing of sandcastles, Cornish life guard hut and people on the beach. Also notes and a small diagram doodles whilst explaining UV layout to son. 🏖 🏰 🏊♀️Notebook Ethel, spread Forty-Four. More Cornish drawings, Godrevy Ligjthouse, garbage writing and stables. ✍️ 💡 🐴Notebook Ethel, spread forty- five. To do lists, mini mind maps, drawings of family shoes and desk fan. 👞 🕷 🗺Notebook: Ethel, spread forty-six. Horse and rider drawings from life, went on to become the animation I have in my current pinned tweet. About 40 mins. Pencil and fountain pen. 🐎 🖊 🎞Notebook Ethel: Spread Forty-Seven. It’s the last page from Ethel!! Classic work page. I do not usually share work stuff but this is all non-descript information on creating landscapes from DEM data. 🕸 🏔 ✏️
Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-Three. Early dinosaur choreography for what was to become “Dino Death Match”, full CG prehistoric animal project. 🦖 💃 📓Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-Four. More workings for “Dino Death Match”, render planning, lists, visualisations etc. 📓 🦖 ✍️Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty Five. Mind map and storyboard for Dino Death Match, here referred to as NanoTrex as the programme focused on a fossil discovery of a “baby” Tyrannosaurus which some contested was actually a new species named the Nanotyrannosaur. Storyboarding behaviours, deciding render settings and shot timings. etc 🕷 🦖 🔬Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-Six. Website planning. During the last few years I have been “gardening”(?) my blog, more building a record of thoughts, art, work, notes and personal history than for actual self promotion. I have been doing this using WordPress with the intention that I can go self hosted at some point when I have the spare energy and resources to make that happen. This mind map is a plan of this process from a few years ago. I still work on this as many time in a week as I can manage. Hopefully it can become something that will survive the too and fro of Social media silos. It’s still a work in progress. It’s not finished and it’s not perfect, but it’s very much mine and become more mine the more time I have a chance to put in. #isleofblogging #linkinbio ✍️🕷🗺Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-Seven. Garbage writing & stories with bad illustrations. 📓✍️🖼Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-Eight. Mind map, notes, doodles and lists for the graphics and CGI in what was to become “Countdown to Life”, then called 9 Months., which followed the development of the human foetus through the 9 months of gestation. 🗺 👶 📓Notebook Ethel: Spread Thirty-Nine. Garden chair, ornamental bush and garbage writing. Ornamental bush is a bit hidden in the mess, but it is there. 🌳✍️🛋
Notebook Ethel, Spread Twenty-Seven. Notes and workings for particle interactions on a surface in Autodesk Maya. 🌊 🔬 💥Notebook Ethel, Spread Twenty-Eight. Mind map in rigging, to help understanding of animation process ahead of projects with prehistoric reconstruction. 🕷 🦕 📓Notebook Ethel, Spread twenty-nine. Garbage writing, cars in car parks and the view from the rear window at South Parade. 🚗 ✍️ 📓Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty. Garbage writing, unfinished Fudge story with thumb nail illustrations. ✍️🖼💀
Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-One. Garbage writing, short stories and illustrations. 👹 ✍️ 📓Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirty-Two. Mind map on rigging models in Maya and drawing of snacking child (artist included). 🧒 🕷 📓
Continuing the project of uploading most pages form Notebook Ethel. As I said before these are from a few years ago now.
Notebook Ethel: Spread 9. Weird comic strip, drawings of the diners at the cafe over the road, dude eating his sandwich on the wall outside, some cows and a copying of a drawing of an old man by Chris Ware taken from his Acme Novelty Datebook Sketchbook facsimile book thing.Notebook Ethel: Spread 10. Office coats, vintage teapot, Tyndales Baptist Church, pressed flowers and garbage writing. 📓 ✏ 💐Notebook Ethel Spread: 12. Incoherent comics strip and the view across Whiteladies Road from the window at BDH. ✒📓🏢Notebook Ethel, Spread Thirteen. Garbage writing, guitar in the workplace, refuse container. 🎸📓✒Notebook Ethel, Spread Fourteen. Satellite data coordinates, designing polygon construction, internal combustion engine visualisation, missing render frame numbers, Titan storyboard. 🔨 📓 🎨Notebook Ethel, Spread Fifteen. Mind map of the nCloth gynamics system in Maya. Also very old QOTSA concert ticket I found in a shoe box. 🗺 📓 🎸Notebook: Ethel, Spread Sixteen. Mind map for Forces Of Nature, episode “Where”, visualisation of the launch of the Planck rocket, Titan, storyboard, eyeflower comic, timings. 📓 🚀 🌎Notebook: Ethel, Spread Seventeen. Drawing of injured foot (this is from a while ago), Wacom pen and garbage writing. ✍ 📓 👞
Beginning a large project of uploading old notebook pages. These are not high res scans as that would considerably increase the amount of time needed, so these would have to do for now.
These are all generally going up on Instagram first.
Opening page of Notebook: Ethel. I’m going to be uploading notebooks in a more systematic fashion (with sensitive info deleted obvs). Notebook Ethel is a few years old. This is before I started using the first page spread as an index for the rest of the book. So the lists here are largely inspirational items and ideas of content capture. There’s not much order and I tend to fill empty spaces with bits of ephemera stuck in and doodles.Clifton windows, lists and words. This is a systematic uploading.First drafts, mug drawing, rough mind map, comics and a quote from Lynda Barry. It’s along the lines of: “I’ve come to regard comics as something like a song. It can be about anything. We can address all sorts of things in a song, love gone wrong, truck driving, Daddies, smoking, boots, birthdays, cheating, space travel, big butts, revenge, war, a turkey in the straw, regret, genders, hands, purple haze . We can this way we can make comics about anything.” – Although I did write it down in a hurry!Daily mini-maps, plans for website, doodles and the like.Preliminary notes on Shark Brains, Art Speigelman on Maus: “Reality is too complex for any media” “Ironic Distance” “Fourth Wall” “Blank expressions allow the reader to impose their own” “I draw my comics one to one” “The past and the present intertwining, simultaneously in the same space” …& Ray Bradbury on writing: “Libraries are full of people not books” “Love what you do. Do what you love” “I don’t write the book, my characters write the book, they come to me and they tell me” “Stand on the top of the cliff, jump off, build your wings on the way down.” etc…Notes for a very short film called “Bevel’s Nub” that appeared in the @strangealtars project a while back. Marker pen, biro, pencil.Mind Map of the early days with Arnold and Maya before he full recent integration.Mind Map on understanding Linear Colour Space within Maya and Arnold back when we first started using it.
I’m going to be uploading notebooks in a more systematic fashion (with sensitive info deleted obvs). Notebook Ethel is a few years old.
This is before I started using the first page spread as an index for the rest of the book. So the lists here are largely inspirational items and ideas of content capture. There’s not much order and I tend to fill empty spaces with bits of ephemera stuck in and doodles.
117/365 Recently rediscovered missing parts of a vintage 16mm projector, the rest of which was donated to a beloved local cinema some 14 years ago. I’ve been in touch and fingers crossed all the component parts will be reunited soon. Uniball. 10 mins Notebook: Ethel118/365 Lunchtime sequential drawing of a random member of the white wire brigade enjoying the Indian Summer in various states of smart phone reading. Uniball 10 mins Notebook: Artemis (homemade)
119/365 Horses and riders at this weekend’s lesson. Drawn without looking (no glasses). Tried to pick up the pace on the second page. Will try and Vine these as an animation when I get the chance. 45 mins Blue Stabilo point 88. Notebook: Ethel
120/365 Selection of barns and various farm building near Tickenham, North Somerset. Drawn whilst hiding in the car from the cold. V-Ball. Notebook: Ethel. 20 mins121/365 Windows on Whiteladies Road. There’s plenty, I could do a whole book of these. Uniball micro. Notebook: Ethel Approx 20 mins intermittent whilst waiting for playblast renders.122/365 @mrtimmytimtim‘s coat hanging on the second floor door at BDH. Just tipped a third of the way through btw. Straight to Uniball. Notebook: Ethel Cumulatively about 15 mins.123/365 Saplings in Leigh Woods. About 10 mins all in. Notebook: Artemis. Uniball micro.124/365 Architectural detail, Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station. Waiting on Platform 5, sllightly hungover. There is no Platform 14. 15 mins V-ball Notebook: Artemis
102/365 Lunchtime car drawing. 10 mins Stabilo point 88. Notebook: Artemis.103/365 Fixing mechanism on the Draper Telescopic Trestle that supports my standing desk. Drawn whilst waiting for a thing. Uni ball micro. 7 mins. Notebook: Ethel.104/365 View from window at work. It’s taken some time this one. This is probably the fifth update? I thought I’d get the leaves done before they fell off again. Drawn whilst waiting for large framed Arnold test renders. Time: unknown. Pencil. Notebook: Ethel.105/365 Japanese anemones. Catching these before they keel over too. DRAW ALL THE FLORA ASAP. Coloured Stabilo point 88. 20 mins. Notebook: Ethel106/365 More work on the sketch of the beloved Vittoria begun on 91/365. Still warm enough to sit outside so. Pencil. 15 mins. Notebook: Ethel.107/365 Various species of scooter from outside Whiteladies Scooter shop. Some of them might be the same scooter, some of them may be the amalgamation of two. Lovely day though. 10 mins Straight to Uni-ball Eye Micro. Notebook: Artemis (homemade)108/365 Tea break drawing of the Gardena THS 400 which I recently have been wielding up ladders, trimming the hedges,bushes, trees and other rampant plant life as one does in the Autumn. 7 mins Straight to Uniball Micro. Notebook: Ethel.109/365 View across to the Ring o’Bells and the Holy Trinity from the Grove. Another bonus summer weekend, a walk in the park, football, jumpers for goalposts etc etc. Time for the bears to start hibernating soon, no? Two colour Stabilo point 88. 15 mins. Notebook: Ethel110/365 Desk fan. Dealing will the heat generated by the all heavy heavy brain activity. 15 mins Multicoloured Stabilo. Notebook: Ethel111/365 Shoes, trainers and boots of various kinds. Season changes, footware changes. Ka-Ching🎶!!! You know how it goes. Straight to Uniball Micro. 15 minutes. Notebook: Ethel
112/365 Half full glass on patterned table cloth. Multi-coloured Stabilo. 16 mins Notebook: Ethel.113/365 Dismaland doodling. Quite good there, it is. Very lucky to get tickets, thanks S. Anniversary treat. A reminder of life before parenthood. Uniball. Notebook: Artemis.114/365 Another lunch break pass at the architectural complexity that is the Vittoria. One more go after this and I think it might be done. Pencil Notebook: Ethel115/365 Saplings in Leigh Woods, drawn on the move whilst discussing the merits of time travel in narrative forms. It was agreed Days of Future Past was a bad example, I cited Philip K Dick’s The Skull as a good one. 5 mins (with distraction) Black Stabilo Notebook: Artemis.
116/365 Busy old week, just managed to fit in a big finish for the blessed Vittoria. I think the notebook paper has taken as much as it can with all the scratching away. Omitted the benches and the chalk board but they were always in different places each sitting. Pencil. Notebook: Ethel.
Progress, progress, limping into action. Always reminding myself how it gets easier the more often I do it so it encourages me to keep going. The pockets of time are there it is usually just a question of being ruthless with oneself.
So if drawing had value even when it was practised by people with no talent, it was for Ruskin because drawing can teach us to see: to notice properly rather than gaze absentmindedly. In the process of recreating with our own hand what lies before our eyes, we naturally move from a position of observing beauty in a loose way to one where we acquire a deep understanding of its parts.
Couple this with the basic idea of habit forming and applied consistency:
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.
Back to my efforts. As ever there is a link to the Instagram post in the caption of the picture:
83/365 Week off art. Drawing the bed before the weeding. Buttercups and honeysuckle. I am officially in 3rd gear. Straight to Uni-ball micro. 30 mins. Notebook: Ethel.84/365 Tree stumps drawn on the slow move in Leigh Woods. Pen Notebook: Artemis86/365 Hanging branch of Russian Vine with a hint of shed. Pencil. Notebook: Ethel87/365 It was Three Dog Friday at BDH towers today. Beryl, Rufus and Ralph. Patterdale Terrier, Boxer and Cavalier Poodle Cross respectively. Some cubist elements due to constant movement. Uniball Micro. Notebook: Ethel.88/365 Throwback to last Thursday’s #BDHunzipped event. That’s Steve, John and Rob (the B, the D and the H respectively) on stage there, being asked questions about their twenty years since founding the company. I meant to do a series but I forgot my glasses so I basically drew this blind, then got lost in the endless spiral of a Rob’s scarf. Pencil. Notebook: Artemis89/365 Another catch up. Very fast doodle of the insides of the fridge at my beloved local chip shop. Filled with a variety of sugary enticing nastiness. Drawn at speed. V-ball. Notebook: Artemis.
Notebook Ethel, spread forty. Garbage writing, Cornish undergrowth, and office dog drawings (three varieties). 🌿🐕✍️
Notebook Ethel, Spread forty-two. Kitchen still life in biro, Clifton windows, garbage writing (obscured) and @3dtimmy’s coat. 🥛 🏠 🧥
Notebook Ethel, spread Forty-Four. More Cornish drawings, Godrevy Ligjthouse, garbage writing and stables. ✍️ 💡 🐴
Notebook Ethel, spread forty- five. To do lists, mini mind maps, drawings of family shoes and desk fan. 👞 🕷 🗺
Notebook: Ethel, spread forty-six. Horse and rider drawings from life, went on to become the animation I have in my current pinned tweet. About 40 mins. Pencil and fountain pen. 🐎 🖊 🎞
Notebook Ethel: Spread Forty-Seven. It’s the last page from Ethel!! Classic work page. I do not usually share work stuff but this is all non-descript information on creating landscapes from DEM data. 🕸 🏔 ✏️
Paul Greer 