There is something fascinating about children's perspective on the world that they try to convey through their drawings. Most artist have these hang ups with making things look realistic, I myself am part of that bunch, but with kids, as long as there are arms legs and a face, to them it's mummy or daddy.

Dave Devries however has taken this concept and flipped it on it's head. Taking childrens drawings and making them as realistic as possible in his book, "The Monsters Engine".

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I just couldn't pass up on getting out there today to do a spot of drawing. It was an unusual 19ºC and sunny. Since the volcano eruption in Iceland grounded all flights in and out of London, the skies was a immaculate clear blue. Usually the skies over London is crisscrossed with streaks of plane fumes so it was a nice change not to see a single white stroke, nor were there any clouds, just pale blue skies and sun.

One of my favorite buildings in London is The Royal Courts of Justice (second drawing on the left). I find it so fascinating but very difficult to draw. I found that once again I was trying too hard to get things perfect and in line. The thing with charcoal is that it's a clumsy medium to use, you can't try and be all delicate with it. I eventually began laying down large areas with black and then using my eraser, I started working into the black to work it into the right shade I wanted. This no longer made me conscious of what I was doing, instead I let instinct take over and I started to draw for the fun of it. After this drawing I headed over to St Pauls.

When I first started to draw in London, St Pauls was definitely one of the buildings top of my list I wanted to draw. I failed miserably on the first attempt so many moons ago, so I felt I needed to try again (third drawing on the left). I'm pretty happy with this drawing, even though you can't tell it's St Paul. I think the main thing is that I'm becoming more and more comfortable with drawing again and I'm trying to do it on a more regular basis.

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I got a rare chance to head into London to do a bit of drawing. This is due to the fact that we've been having an unusual amount of sun and so I no longer had to suffer sitting on cold-numbing stone steps, or wondering to myself how much drawing can I get down before the deluge? It was a lovely day and so I rollerbladed my way over to Westminster to attempt a drawing of the Houses of Parliment, but upon arriving I realiased I haven't drawn the abbey yet.

I'm finally getting my technique down, after so many attempts. I feel that I'm drawing more instinctively, not thinking too much about the marks that I'm making. This is feeling more natural to me, like when I use to draw as a kid. Back then, I wasn't so concerned about getting everything right, I just loved to draw. I was recently at the Tower of London drawing and it just didn't turn out right because I was spending a lot of time trying to get everything right. In the end I gave up and started on a different drawing. This time I focused on being more representational rather than being precise. With charcoal, you can't expect to get every detail of your subject. With this in mind, I wanted to get the important shadows and highlights on the Abbey and then look at what detail I can add. As long as you have enough contrast between light and shadow a charcoal drawing will always turn out right.

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As my time here in London draws closer to an end, I've thought about the things that I'm yet to do before returning home to Australia. One of the things is making sure I get plenty of sketching done while I'm here. I decided today to get out there with my willow sticks and draw. I didn't have a particular plan, just get myself to the city and draw something. I ended up catching a bus to The British Museum, one of my favourite places in London. It was a nice sunny day, but it was still very cold, around 3ºC. I managed about an hour producing these two before it was too cold for me to draw anymore. I'm glad I made the effort and can't wait til it warms up so that I can spend more time drawing around London.

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Finally made a start on Ariiel's Sketchbook, a project I've been sitting on since leaving university. Ariiel is a story that I've been meaning to write and illustrate but have found it hard to make a start. After going to Camden and finding a leather bound diary, I've decided to just go for it and begin, regardless of how terrible the illustrations look or how boring the story turns out. I just want to start myself on this journey and not put too much pressure on myself for something extraordinary. For inspiration I went to the National Art Gallery and sketched one of the paintings, "The Four Ages of Man" by Vincent de Boulogne. Sitting there at the Art Gallery I felt very stiff and uncomfortable and very rusty. This really is just my lack of practice so I just need to remind myself to keep drawing. Also while sketching this I thought again about mixing fantasy with the mundane and normal. Rather than glorifying war by drawing a knight on a horse, I like the idea of a knight reading quietly. It's about searching for beauty in the everyday. I've been thinking more and more about this lately since traveling around. I think that once the excitement dies down, life gets back to normal. What many consider boring, I'm finding more and more at peace with. I've come to realise that you can't maintain a continued level of excitement. You'll soon grow tired regardless of what sort of excitement it is. I was excited about traveling. I couldn't wait to come to London. Now that I've been here for a few years, I'm really excited about returning home. This doesn't just come down to "the grass being greener..." rather I'm beginning to accept that life doesn't have to necessarily be constantly exciting. You need to be bored in order to get yourself out of your chair and do something exciting.

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With my new site finish, I need to now focus on content. Well that was the reason for me migrating my entire site to a CMS site.

I've been playing around with the idea of documenting my processes (for those out there who would be interested). This is going to be my new frontpage illustration, to replace the boy playing with fairy lights.

This is my initial sketch, just looking at it now I've noticed the composition is wrong, needing to give more prominence to the robot in the foreground. Making him larger but maybe blur him out a little. Well I can do all that in photoshop. We'll see how this image turns out.

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It was the heaviest snow fall London had ever seen in 18 years. All travel was suspended so no one was working that day, except for me. I was busy making a snow man into Baby Creative’s logo, but truthfully, couldn’t really call it work because I was having such a fun time doing it.

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This was a fun little job for Baby Creative. Wanting something a bit more fun for one of their pitches, they asked me to make their logo out of plastacine.

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One of my first clumsy starts picking up a stick of charcoal and drawing. I felt I didn’t have the same confidence that I had in university. I felt really akward and it took a while before it all came back to me.

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This is a self-promotional peice that I did before coming to London.

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This illustration was a self promotion piece I did before coming to London. I wanted to create a unique manga style, which uses a more spontaneous line that gives the image a distressed, sketched look.

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This is one of my first charcoal drawings I've done while studying at University of Western Sydney.

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