This has been an odd period so it’s only right it ends on some more oddities. Birds and blots.

The blots came about due to leaving some experimental ink on a sketchbook without anticipating its lack of absorbency. The video documents the ink’s progress through the pages and then reverses it. I was keen to try this because I had just discovered how to make my own transitions between images and used the blot as its own cross-fade. The audio is a camera shutter from PowerDirector’s stock provision.

These sketchbook paintings in watercolour pencil and acrylics on A4 cartridge were a response to Katie Tomlinson’s gull in her MA book, Hors d’Oeuvres (2023). Pub Mixam. Her little bruiser has a cigarette slouched in his beak, mine has an evil eye and short pants.

I have many photos of gulls from Brighton where they are notorious. Arrogance personified, and quicker than quicksand, they’ll have your chips or your pizza and possibly also your ciggy right out of your hand.

Osprey don’t really lend themselves to caricature. These are serious birds with no sense of humour. The paintings are from my screenshots of, first a youngster making the ‘fish call’ to its parents, and second a pair that nested annually together at the same site at Loch Arkaig in Scotland. Sadly, the female didn’t return last season and while her mate waited for a good few weeks, he was eventually lured away by another who had set up home elsewhere.

This feels to me to epitomise ‘Gull’. Entitled, serially annoyed, and looking down at you. Which lighting do we prefer – morning (blueish) or afternoon (mellow yellow)?

Still a multitude of styles but I like all of them because they do different things. Some are more painterly, others lean towards the illustrative, and the outcomes are just as variable. If I had to pick a favourite, ‘Wot?’ above would be the one. You just know there’s no point arguing with that expression wherever you might see it!

Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2023