Train People

These were painted from photographs I took of real people on trains in Japan. Trains are very quiet places in Japan. People are coming to and from work (and from school) at all times. No matter what time you catch a train, there'll always be a business man or a school child somewhere on it. People are just thinking, reading comic books, studying or playing video games. It's more rare to see people chatting on trains here than it is back home as making noise is seen as disturbing people. My mum and dad loved it, when they came to visit me!

I don't know what the people in these paintings are thinking or dreaming about, I just tried to catch a moment. The drawings are just heavy graphite pencil and watercolours on blank watercolour postcards. I wanted to draw the pictures in one go, without rubbing out any lines or correcting anything, so it would maybe look more believable. I got through a lot of postcards, since my sense of scale is awful! 

 

A Couple of Paintings

I thought I'd just add that the poem 'Wishbone' was written for my girlfriend (The Chi), who's pretty great! Here's a couple of paintings. The first was painted as a practice for another (much delayed) picture, so I could get used to using oil paints. I drew round a banana, so actual picture is banana sized. The second was done as a comparison of home (the UK) and Japan (where I am at the mo) for an exhibition, but I didn't use it in the end. The second's a daikon (Japanese radish) and the real one is daikon sized. Any innuendo is purely in your head and was genuinely unintentional and you should maybe consider being ashamed.