Quintadagio - 33

I had a comment left on my Facebook page from an old friend...actually probably one of my oldest friends. My friend Richard was the person I sat next to on my first day at infant school, and after many years, we're back in touch. Richard used to know me as (amongst other things I'm sure he could tell you) an artist even at such an early age..I have always drawn and my parents , friends and especially teachers encouraged me to follow my interest and develop my talent. Anyway, back to the comment which was basically asking how I manage to do 'this'.

This is not exactly a guide to Hyperpointillism or really how to do it..but I thought I'd show you a series of photographs steadily zooming out from one dot ( see above )....it was probably the first dot..every journey begins with one step...every one of my pictures begins with one dot.

I'm reading another book at the moment by Salley Vickers.I love her writing as it's very human and addresses many of life's bigger issues in everyday settings. In my current book 'MR. Golightly's Holiday' the main character who is an author remarks that for the artist, there is no better feeling than to hold the concept and vision of a piece of art in the mind...knowing what it will become and how it will be achieved before any mark is on the page/canvas........ I know this feeling well, and there is no more better example than this drawing. In my mind, I know what it will look like...I know what I want..and bit by bit I'm creating what I have already seen in my mind.

A group of dots become an eye...a set of eyelids...To reach even this stage I have worked on repeated sketches in my sketchbook...rejected many and decided on this...if you look back the the first posts of this piece indeed showed me scrap a previous face in favour of this... At this stage, you can probably still count how many dots I've drawn.

Moving further away you can still see the first dot...you could also at a stretch count how many dots there are...but you'll be hard pressed to count any further. I love the way that one's eye reaches a point where 1..2..3..4..becomes 'a lot' becomes 'too many to tell apart'.

This type of work is by no means easy. I've spent the last 27 years using this technique, and each time I compose and execute a work, I learn more...I push the method a little further. It is by no means quick or easy.

How many hundreds of thousands of dots are now gathered here?..certainly too many to ever count..and by now the eye loses the ability ( at least at this resolution) to differential between dots...

Over 100 hours of pure dotting have now gone into Quintadagio...I'm nearly 25% finished! ..and I'm the only one who knows what it will look like.But you can too if you come back tomorrow...and the next day...and the next........