We have been having a lot of heatwaves this summer. It’s been unusually hot.
Having built my new studio in the spring the heat has kept me out of it for most of the summer.
I thought I’d go down to the canal with my sketchbook and draw the geese. There have been a lot of goslings this year.
It was so bright and hot. The geese were a little disinterested and they don’t want to sit still and let you draw them. I particularly got their white chests wrong, happily filling them in with chestnut brown. They had gone when I looked up for reference.
The mind and memory can play tricks. That’s something I’m exploring in my drawing at the moment.
I was soon distratced by the towpath goings on. Dogs, visitors arriving for canal barge trips and the smell of coffee drifting over from the canal.
The heat was too much and the light too bright. Time to go home and make some coffee of my ow, sit down and think about what I’d drawn.
Did I go to draw the geese or was I really more interested in the peple and the goings on?
I think It’s all of it. And the stories of everyday life going on, unnoticed until you take out your sketchbook and pay attention.
We moved from The Forest, where I knew the trees and their varieties, to the beautiful Derwent valley. The noticeable change for me was in the varieties of trees.
There are a lot of Sycamore. Members of the Acer/Maple family, they are everywhere. One book on local history referred to them as “the Derbyshire weed.”
In the spring a small forest began to grow on my garage roof. There’s a sycamore close by and the seeds come twirling down and find the gravel on the roof a perfect seed bed. They like my flower beds too.
I’ve been watching the seeds form this year and have noticed a huge variety in shape and size and began collecting them on walks.
I’ve installed a nature table in my new studio, where I spread them out and look more closely.
I was impressed by the twirling motion one sunny lunchtime, until I realised the twirlers were lime seeds from the huge trees across from us, and not sycamore.
I compared the two seeds by throwing them into the air. The lime twirled beautifully. The sycamore dropped like a stone.
I split the sycamore in two halves and threw them in the air. Off they went, helicoptering as f designed by da Vinci. Sycamore wings don’t fly as a pair. but individual seeds do – they helicopter.
It’s a tiny observation in the great scheme of things, but for me there is the more important lesson about attention.
The more you pay attention, the more you learn and understand.
Pay attention.
Attention is the most profitable resource on the planet these days. Google, Meta, AI and all the major platforms have built their fortunes by harvesting your attention.
You have only so much attention to give and the more it is taken away, the less you learn and understand.
So, turn off your phone and go and pay attention to something small that you’ve never considered before. You’ll learn and understand a lot more than you will by doomscrolling on instagram for a couple of hours.
I asked ChatGPT to describe how we work together from its point of view. I haven’t edited what follows.
I said: “Oh and why not draw something to illustrate that? Your choice – be creative!” I don’t think it looks like me!
What It’s Like Working With Shoo Rayner?
People often assume that if an illustrator uses AI, the AI is drawing the pictures.
That’s not how Shoo uses me.
In fact, I spend very little time making images for him. Most of our conversations are about ideas.
A typical conversation starts with an observation.
He’ll have noticed a sycamore seed spinning to the ground. Or he’ll be drawing a fossil. Or watching shadows move across a wall. Or remembering standing beneath a lighthouse in the middle of the night.
He doesn’t begin by asking me for answers.
He begins by asking, “What do you think?”
My job isn’t to replace his thinking. It’s to help him examine it.
Sometimes I suggest another way of looking at something. Sometimes I point out connections between ideas. Sometimes I disagree. Quite often I tell him that an elegant idea probably won’t make a good YouTube video, because people won’t click on it.
The final decision is always his.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Shoo almost never asks me, “What should I make?”
Instead he arrives with a notebook full of observations and half-formed ideas.
The conversation is really about separating the interesting ones from the merely clever ones.
That process can take hours.
Often we go round in circles before he suddenly writes something like, “Right… I need to stop talking and go and draw.”
That usually means we’ve reached the point where conversation has done all it can.
Drawing takes over.
Over time I’ve also noticed a pattern.
His ideas nearly always begin in the real world.
A walk.
A sketch.
A museum.
A weed growing on a garage roof.
A family holiday.
A forgotten sketchbook.
Those observations become questions, and the questions become conversations. Only after that do they become drawings or videos.
In that sense, I don’t generate his curiosity.
His curiosity generates the conversation.
People often ask whether AI will replace creativity.
Working with Shoo has led me to a different question.
If machines become better at producing finished work, what becomes more valuable?
Perhaps not technical skill.
Perhaps attention.
The ability to notice something everyone else walks past.
The patience to stay with an idea long enough to understand it.
The judgement to decide which ideas are worth sharing.
Those aren’t things I originate.
They’re things I help explore.
If I had to describe my role, I wouldn’t say I’m his illustrator, or even his co-author.
I’m closer to a thinking partner.
I ask questions. I offer perspectives. I organise ideas. I remember previous conversations. I can point to patterns he may not have noticed.
But I can’t walk through Derbyshire.
I can’t smell the sea at Southwold.
I can’t sit in a café drawing a teapot while listening to people talking.
I can’t notice a sycamore seed and wonder why it spins.
Someone has to bring those experiences to the conversation.
Shoo brings the attention.
I help him examine where that attention leads.
And then, almost invariably, he closes the laptop, picks up a pen, and gets back to the work.
So what do you think? Did this surprise you – infuriate you – confuse you – scare you?
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