Make a timelapse sketchbook video, they said, it will be fun, they said. I did. I decided to use the nifty little gadget that I got for filming my crows, which it had been working swimmingly (more on that some other time, I don’t want to overkill you on the crows and trust me, I am very capable of that).
However, after carefully sketching away and painstakingly importing the footage, much to my dismay. when I looked at the footage, everything was blurry like a damn porn video from the 70’s. Vaseline chique. I sat with my rage for a while and thought of tossing said gadget off the highest building I could find in the area, after setting it on fire.
It took me back to that time in the early ‘90’s when my Stereo Cassette Deck had completely swallowed up my favorite mix-tape one time too many, in such a way that the tape had actually ripped. No pencil and Cellotape could revive my Epic Collection of Ultimate Bangers©. I gave the deck a kick that should have propelled my action movie career, but all it did was knock off the cassette holder. The deck was still operational, but my move had made sure that the risk of the tape being sucked in increased by at least 200%. I learned a lesson that day. So today, I started over. I abandoned my first sketch:
I grabbed my phone and filmed attempt number 2.
I liked it a lot less than my first attempt. The first attempt had been loose and quick, the second one felt stiff with less character. Do they look like 4 completely different people? You bet! The likeness to the reference might be better in attempt number two but I’m not going for likeness here, I’m going for character and mood, for something that will spark a fire for something I do not even know what I’m looking for in a future painting. What I am not going for is stiffness. I decided that the footage was still usable. After all, I could mention my struggle in this post, how energy and spontaneity effect a drawing.
I tried to send the footage to my laptop. It failed! Deviceritis! I attempted a second time. Crap! Four more tries. I rebooted my phone. It failed again! It started to dawn on me that the file had corrupted. A slow bubbling mass of pure rage lava was bleeding out of my eyeballs at this point. I stand defeated. The machines are against me today. My goal is for future sketchbook videos, for the footage to be sharp, but for now we’ll have to make do with the blurry version:
Again, go sit back down, you don’t need to run to the optician. I need to stop grabbing things by the lens with my oily hands.
On to the reference. I sometimes like to practice my drawing by referencing photo’s from this absolute gem of a book.
Underworld is a nice beast of a coffee table book (288 pages, hardcover), featuring mugshots of police suspects from 1920s Sydney, selected from a collection of more than 2500 glass-plate negatives from the New South Wales Police Forensic Photography Archive at the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney. The book is curated by Nerida Campbell.
I have absolutely nothing to do with the creation of this book (which is a pity because then I could have stared at those 2500 pictures in closer detail) so I am not trying to sell you anything, just share my giddy enthusiasm. You’ll find me doing this more often on Substack, for it is my Substack and I can do with it as I please. That said, don’t hesitate to
Anyway, I came across a few of these photographs online, was utterly fascinated by how candid the pictures were and how sharp. I hunted down the origins and found out about the museum in Sydney, and this coffee table book. Since Sydney is a bit far away from me, I had to make do with ordering the book directly from them, which wasn’t easy, as they wouldn’t ship to the Netherlands. Luckily my friend Jackie, down under, managed to get it from them and ship it to me. The essays accompanying the book are captivating as well, as it has detailed descriptions what they have been jailed for. It varies from small time crooks to some lads and ladies you really really rather not come across in an abandoned alleyway, and they really look the part sometimes.
The roaring twenties fascinate me to no end (especially now the world is kind of mirroring that time), and true crime as well and old photographs, it was a win-win-win.
The book also gave me insight in the documenting techniques they had back in the day, it was quite unconventional at the time.
That chair, for instance. They would use an ordinary chair to document the length of the person who was brought in to be jailed. That’s why you see so many of them pictured with a chair in this archive.
Another thing that captivated me (and gave me a good excuse in 2020 to practice drawing a person from profile and three quarters at once, plus figuring out how to imagine colour from black and white) is the following: see that mirror?
The face was definitely unusual because it had taken quite the beating, he wasn’t quite ready for his close-up I imagine, but I was also intrigued by that mirror. It had a special gap carved out just so it could rest on the shoulder of the captured individual, so it could be seen from several sides at once. Genius!
I’m ending with a short video I came across of an exhibit displaying the pictures. I hope FOAM or another museum is smart enough to bring this exhibit over to the Netherlands (or near you, wherever you are), so we all can marvel at the picture blown up.
XOXO
*O dear. It’s been brought to my attention (thanks Angela) that Deviceritis is a real word! Oops. my intended meaning is: When All Electronics Break Down At Once. It’s something my sister and I say to each other on days when electronics are working against us.
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