Throwing Shade.

 I've been drawing. Illustrations for my book on teeth, which will be called "Teeth". I'm quite happy with the title. Says it all. Apart from the rest of the book. 

There are going to be six largish black and white illustrations, plus some individual molar drawings, perhaps for the chapter breaks, or just randomly scattered through the text, like lost teeth on a nightclub floor. 

I don't do many illustrations these days, and every time I do I remember why that is. In the past I tried a relatively ligne claire style, modeled after Daniel Clowes. These days I combine that with the morbid cross-hatching of Edward Gorey, making my drawings instantly recognisible, and not as good as either of the things they're ripping off. It also takes a very long time to complete them. Here too, we can see my signature poor distribution of labour - the basic drawing, which I should take time over, is dashed off, and the interminable cross-hatching in ink takes forever. It's something akin to a folly: over-elaborate, complicated, and with faulty foundations. Nevertheless, that's how my ballpoint rolls. 

This sort of thing. 

It may have to change. As well as the creeping arthritis in my fingers, I can't really see anymore. I currently wear two pairs of glasses, though not simultaneously. Most of the time I wear a seeing-things-in-the-distance pair, and have to place the menu at arms length to read it. Or I wear reading-and-writing glasses, and the distance is an uninvolving blur. Increasingly I'm just wearing the second pair. Who can be arsed with stuff in the distance? That's someone elses's problem. With these latest drawings however, I'm drawing lines of such ghostly fineness - quantum shading is the realm I've stumbled into - that neither pair are up to it and I'm having to place my naked eye on the page just to join up the little scribbles of black. 

This apparent progressive myopia reminds me of Donald Pleasence's chipper Blythe the Forger from The Great Escape. Splendid. Splendidly splendid. 

I've done five of the drawings. There's one more to go. Then it's time for the lavender eye-mask and a lie down in a cool dark room. Luckily it's October in Northern Ireland, so all my rooms are cool and dark, and will be till April. Which is, coincidentally, when the book is published.