I’ve always despaired a little with surrealism: it seemed to run out of energy so soon after it began. I think that a part of the problem was that it seemed to be very symbolic and, well conscious, and grounded in theory, so what it presented was almost like an anthropological report of the subconscious. When I looked at it portrayed back to me, it reminded me of what it must be like to read a report of your strange and remarkable civilisation, dictated in fragments over telephone to a writer of potboilers, hidden somewhere within London literary society.

For the real depth, I’ve always found illustrators like Austin Spare more forthcoming. (There’s surprisingly little of his “automatic” sigil-form illustration on the web).

So I was overjoyed to find a similarly engaging book in Heffers today: 50 Drawings to Murder Magic by Antonin Artaud in English translated side-by-side facsimile. A short poem of intent is followed by ambiguous and semi-automatic sketches, with a real coherence and shared structure. Most are little more than scribbles, but have real subconscious grip. I can see it being a real source of inspiration.

As he writes of his drawings:

merely commentary / on action that / has really occurred / merely a limited / figuration / on the paper / of a rush of feeling / that has occurred / and magnetically / and magically worked its effects.

Interestingly, I now see that one of my favourite dramatists, Heiner Müller, used Artaud as inspiration. This suggests that I should might Caryl Churchill, too, whose work I’m not aware of.

Of the sporadic but okish quantity of drawing and painting I’ve done in the last 3 years (a massive amount compared to 5 sketches I did in the 15 years previous) I am most proud of the one shown above.

It’s not thought out, not accomplished but it was spontaneous and done in spit and ink. There are several in my sketch book in this sequence and they were done at the All about Eve exhibition that Kettles Yard held in when the Rodin exhibition was on in London.

The last time a major Rodin exhibition was held in this county was at the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank and I went along with the rest of the students from my art college. The original plan was to crash through the exhibition and bugger off to the pub. Faced with sculpture upon sculpture of by this astonishing force of nature, we all dropped our crappy coolness and got down to some serious drawing. We didn’t get to the pub. By sketching his work I started to understand his vigour, his conflicts, his desire. All I had with me was a biro and my sketch book but I found myself digging it into the page forcefully as I tried learn by rote the lines he had set down.

Picking up my pens and pencils and forcing myself to draw is like dragging myself to go and do the washing up sometimes. I don’t leap at the the page with joy. I look at it in fear and loathing so often. That’s why drawing in a group can be so useful because the joint discipline gets you moving.

Being at close quarters with Rodin again 20 or more years later reacquainted me with a passion for drawing. A fierce need to get marks onto paper – as urgent a need as kissing a lover. I’d brought my sketch book but had forgotten my pencil case. All I had was a black pen. The echoes of my last encounter were very strong and old confidence floated back into my fingers and I happily gouged into the paper and spat onto my fingers to make smudges for tone.

Drawing Rodin’s Eve enabled me to discover far more that I would have done just by looking. My close observations helped me realise that the model he used was in the early stages of pregnancy (confirmed later on in the exhibition – it was a possible reason why he never finished the study), and that the hands were the most finished part of the sculpture – incredibly delicate compared to the rest of her healthy sturdiness. I did about 4 rough sketches, none took more than 5 mins.

The last time I was that happy painting was trying a new technique at the Oxford art group I was part of. Kieran, our mentor (teacher I guess but it feels too formal) would get us to try a new method every week and this one involved doing a very rough sketch and then taking a putty rubber and randomly rubbing most of the drawing out. Then you would repeat this process over and over and gradually your drawing would emerge on the page as if it were a photograph in developing fluid. I got completely absorbed by the materials I was using. The result was one of my favourite drawings of my own work. And it is of a bloody cheeseplant of all things. The following week I tried to repeat the experience and failed utterly. I think it was because I was trying to achieve a preconceived result rather than getting lost in the process.

This may well be my big huge lesson for my drawing and painting and I can see it taking me a few damn years. Actually now I come to write about it about this, the lesson seems very clear. My trouble when I go out with my sketchbook is that I have some monkey on my back telling to render my chosen view with ‘artistic accuracy’. This is a silly notion. All the successful pieces I’ve done have all been a result of me exploring with the medium.

Please hit me over the head with this when I forget.