Transcript
Story of a Sketchbook
by Kim McDermottroe
We have added the video again here so that you can use the film and follow the transcript if required.
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I’ve always done drawing, like, as a kid I always loved drawing, I remember being sat and my nana and grandads and I would copy off Christmas cards.
You know like if you got an old Christmas card that had a mouse on it of something, it’s like absolute jackpot ‘cause I’ll be drawing that. So I just loved drawing from then.
I’m inspired by anyone who does really good characters, anybody who paints weird things.
The weird things are always the most interesting.
Like, it is a total cliché, but if you use your imagination, inspiration can be found anywhere.
The book is a field journal of characters that I see out and about. Life faces in unusual places.
So, I make eye contact with them and I can’t get away from it.
I don’t make eye contact that much with people so I feel I have a better connection with some branches, or some bricks in a certain way and I look at them and I’m like, they might have been there for ages and nobody has noticed them and now it’s my responsibility, I need to document them and get them in my book.
That’s what happens.
So a lot of the things have come from stuff I’ve seen. Some of the stuff is stuff I see behind my eyes but a lot of it’s out in the world already. You’ve just got to notice it.
These are the character that I drew that the bird gave me with it’s poo and they were just really obvious to me.
They are Backwards Walkers. You don’t know if they are coming or going. Neither do they really! But they do walk backwards.
I drew them with a nest as their body ‘cause obviously the bird gave me the inspiration so it made sense to do that.
This one is the baby, so he walks forwards at the minute but as he gets older his legs will turn. They are already starting and he will walk backwards.
Because I make puppets and hands are quite a them that I use, like a repetitive theme in my work so I decided I would do this where it was shifting the control so the kind of puppet is suspended above the hand because normal marionettes would be the hand is above the puppet and it controls it and it’s kind of, I like the ambiguity as who is controlling who in this one.
I was making an enormous Tipi and the Technical Manager was threading the poles up into this enormous canvas Tipi on the floor and her legs were sticking out and the poles were sticking out of it and I just saw this. In my mind this is what I was actually looking at so these characters came from that, obviously the legs and then these are the Tipi poles sticking out the top.
Most of them are kind of stand alone characters and I’ll probably have a bit of a story for each one that we’ve been thinking about pulling out and maybe doing some children’s books with them. That’d be amazing. The style of the illustration brings them all together.
I work with a group of people who have become my friends through working with them, Laura Degnan is a film maker and I usually make costumes for her films and this time she text me and she said I’m not sure if it’s your cup of tea really but we need this kind of book of the dead, a Necronomicon doing, illustrating, we need copyright free images so if you want to say no that’s fine ‘cause I know you do costume and I was like, you’ve never asked me to do anything more up my street YES I’m doing that!
And then after that, I was like I’ve just got loads more ideas and she only needed three double page spreads.
The good thing about drawing characters is that I can decide who they are and when you watch a film or anything over and over it’s lovely because they’re consistent and they’re just the same every time which is really good.
I’m not very good with people stuff and how they can be inconsistent it drives me insane.
It’s like the Autism is just one thing about me. There’s many other, probably more interesting things.
It means that, I can let myself off and that doesn’t mean make excuses, that means I’ve got a reason for doing things the way that I do them and I’m not awkward or difficult, I just need things to be a certain way so it just helps me to understand that for myself but it also helps me explain to other people aswell.
A film out of my book, that would be class wouldn’t it, with the characters, ‘cause I’d love to have the characters in real like it’s alright drawing them but it’s not enough sometimes you just want them in real life aswell.
I’d love that
I’ve always done drawing, like, as a kid I always loved drawing, I remember being sat and my nana and grandads and I would copy off Christmas cards.
You know like if you got an old Christmas card that had a mouse on it of something, it’s like absolute jackpot ‘cause I’ll be drawing that. So I just loved drawing from then.
I’m inspired by anyone who does really good characters, anybody who paints weird things.
The weird things are always the most interesting.
Like, it is a total cliché, but if you use your imagination, inspiration can be found anywhere.
The book is a field journal of characters that I see out and about. Life faces in unusual places.
So, I make eye contact with them and I can’t get away from it.
I don’t make eye contact that much with people so I feel I have a better connection with some branches, or some bricks in a certain way and I look at them and I’m like, they might have been there for ages and nobody has noticed them and now it’s my responsibility, I need to document them and get them in my book.
That’s what happens.
So a lot of the things have come from stuff I’ve seen. Some of the stuff is stuff I see behind my eyes but a lot of it’s out in the world already. You’ve just got to notice it.
These are the character that I drew that the bird gave me with it’s poo and they were just really obvious to me.
They are Backwards Walkers. You don’t know if they are coming or going. Neither do they really! But they do walk backwards.
I drew them with a nest as their body ‘cause obviously the bird gave me the inspiration so it made sense to do that.
This one is the baby, so he walks forwards at the minute but as he gets older his legs will turn. They are already starting and he will walk backwards.
Because I make puppets and hands are quite a them that I use, like a repetitive theme in my work so I decided I would do this where it was shifting the control so the kind of puppet is suspended above the hand because normal marionettes would be the hand is above the puppet and it controls it and it’s kind of, I like the ambiguity as who is controlling who in this one.
I was making an enormous Tipi and the Technical Manager was threading the poles up into this enormous canvas Tipi on the floor and her legs were sticking out and the poles were sticking out of it and I just saw this. In my mind this is what I was actually looking at so these characters came from that, obviously the legs and then these are the Tipi poles sticking out the top.
Most of them are kind of stand alone characters and I’ll probably have a bit of a story for each one that we’ve been thinking about pulling out and maybe doing some children’s books with them. That’d be amazing. The style of the illustration brings them all together.
I work with a group of people who have become my friends through working with them, Laura Degnan is a film maker and I usually make costumes for her films and this time she text me and she said I’m not sure if it’s your cup of tea really but we need this kind of book of the dead, a Necronomicon doing, illustrating, we need copyright free images so if you want to say no that’s fine ‘cause I know you do costume and I was like, you’ve never asked me to do anything more up my street YES I’m doing that!
And then after that, I was like I’ve just got loads more ideas and she only needed three double page spreads.
The good thing about drawing characters is that I can decide who they are and when you watch a film or anything over and over it’s lovely because they’re consistent and they’re just the same every time which is really good.
I’m not very good with people stuff and how they can be inconsistent it drives me insane.
It’s like the Autism is just one thing about me. There’s many other, probably more interesting things.
It means that, I can let myself off and that doesn’t mean make excuses, that means I’ve got a reason for doing things the way that I do them and I’m not awkward or difficult, I just need things to be a certain way so it just helps me to understand that for myself but it also helps me explain to other people aswell.
A film out of my book, that would be class wouldn’t it, with the characters, ‘cause I’d love to have the characters in real like it’s alright drawing them but it’s not enough sometimes you just want them in real life aswell.
I’d love that
