After the interplay of light and colour of our last Kick-About together, enjoy these new works made in a short time inspired by the figurative lines of Jogen Chowdhury. For all previous editions of The Kick-About, click here.
Vanessa Clegg
“I took one look at this and decided recent(ish) screen prints would be a fine way to get back into kick about, after such a long break.. it’s good to be back. These were based on a painting I did following a month’s trip travelling around Northern India… the colour of the buildings, fabrics and flowers, pigments… everything in fact was a sensory delight.”
Gary Thorne
“Chowdhury is one remarkable artist so, it was a hard one this, to narrow it down to a single piece of work carrying an expression of the extraordinary, as is his ability. A bit odd maybe after the previous KA to again embark on a portrait, but the sitter was willing and able…”
Charly Skilling
“The clean, simple lines of Jogen Chowdhury’s work conveys a serenity, a stillness, to his images that draws the viewer in. I spent some time trying to capture a little of this with pen and paper, but finally turned to my crochet hook and yarn. I still have much to learn about this style of freeform crochet, but I am really pleased with the way this turned out – even if it does still has wonky edges!”
Kerfe Roig
“When I looked at Chowdhury’s website, I was immediately drawn to the Portraits page–I know this is all early work, but it spoke to me much more than his later, more generic, renderings of people. His choice of a repeated face to draw was his own, but I chose a photo of an interesting face I had saved to do in his various techniques. I did make a final one in simple marker lines, and then attempted a monoprint from the drawing, but I failed to get either the power of his line or the cartoony quality of his work. My strength is in trying to capture what makes the face unique. The one that most resembles the actual face I was drawing is #7, but I like #6 best, where I drew with marker without taking the pen off the paper.”
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Itta Howie
“When I saw Chowdhury’s caricature-like portraits, each drawn in one unbroken line, I fancied having another go at touch drawings, something I had explored a couple of years ago. In my tactile self-portraits the touching hand explores the topography of my face, and the drawing hand attempts to move in sync with the touching hand. Sometimes I close my eyes to focus on the synchrony of the two hands, sometimes I allow a soft gaze to orientate myself on the paper. Each drawing follows its own rhythm and drama depending on the starting point of the finger on my face – an eye brow, nostril or corner of the mouth – and the journey it takes from there. Though this work is very much about the process, the dance between the two hands, I like the grotesque visual outcome. Each self-portrait suggests a different character or mood, despite me sitting there with the same kind of non-expressive Zen face throughout.”
Graeme Daly
“Some automatic continuous line drawings to try and mimic Chowdhury’s distorted images of the human form and objects.”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog
Marion Raper
“I went into the garden for inspiration and found an Amaryllis which had gone to seed. The seed cases were a beautiful heart shape and I decided to sketch the plant whilst looking down at it which seemed to make an interesting arrangement. I then added some “doodle like” decoration to finish. By now I felt very relaxed and in a happy place and decided it is no wonder Jogen looks so peaceful and good for his age of 84.“
Phil Gomm
“I took this opportunity to pare things down, so began by drawing a circle and a square with a nice ink pen onto some textural, handmade paper. The two shapes were generated through lines – and none of them particularly neat or precise. That done, I digitised both drawings, and introduced some ‘folds’ into the shapes to send the lines off in a few different directions. Things quickly assumed a geographical feel.”
Tom Beg
“The lines of Chowdhury’s work look like they are undulating and bristling with a restless energy, so I wanted to find a way to capture that in my own way. I worked out an animation technique that produced quite a satisfying effect wobbly line effect and decided to test it using some images of common insects in Japan. It felt like an apt choice as the creepy crawly bugs around here bristle with that same kind of restless energy. I wasn’t able to turn it into a fully-fledged animation this time, but this technique is certainly something that might appear again sometime in the future.”
twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com
James Randall
“Jogen Chowdhury was another unknown to me and I was plodding along trying to get a couple of figurative ideas to come together but they felt very forced so when I reread the kick-about call and came upon ‘consider the expressiveness of line’ I went back to the drawing board. I quickly painted about twenty thick brush line drawings from some recent rainforest photos. I photographed them and layered them together in colour. I made a simple background in colour, then realised it needed some colour highlighting. I tried another layer of brushwork, but it didn’t want to work for me, so I took the layered image into Illustrator and put some small shapes into the image, which I took back to Photoshop to colour and bevel in two different layer positions. I liked the result of the ‘plastic’ shapes; they felt like they had a greater meaning to me; micro plastics in a forest.”
I saw a ‘Pick Your Own Pumpkin’ sign on my way to the shops today – a sure sign the nights are drawing in and those things that go bump in the night are dusting off their dancing shoes. With the season of spooks and shadows firmly in mind, consider Harry Clarke’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales Of Mystery & Imagination as your next starter-for-ten…
Red's Kingdom 
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