Michael Nobbs

Tag: drawing anxiety

  • Perhaps one day I’ll be pleased I did

    Wider view of Michael’s 15 September self-portrait resting on a dark tablet on top of a crocheted blanket made from blue, cream and muted pink squares. The black-ink drawing lies in the foreground with a dark blue pen and an orange pen beside it. At the upper right, a round wooden-framed mirror reflects Michael lying nearby in glasses and a white top, holding up a phone with a yellow case to take the photograph. The drawing’s loose handwritten notes are visible along the bottom, including the phrase “perhaps one day I’ll be pleased I did.” The mirror, drawing, pens and blanket together show the immediate setting in which the early-morning self-portrait was made.

    Drawing after a little more sleep than usual

    This morning I drew before making my tea. Early, though not quite as early as has been the case for most of my self-portrait drawings over the last two weeks. Today, because I’d had more sleep, I think my brain was more capable of thought — of piecing together memories and ideas.

    I drew with the same growing compulsion that has been present in my recent drawings, but what was missing was the anxiety that has accompanied much of my drawing since I returned to the practice over three years ago.

    What prompted this shift was looking back again at photographs of my MA show on Flickr, and a memory they sparked from that time.

    A memory

    My mother died in early 2008, in the run-up to my final MA show. As we cleared her house, my brother filled bin bags with papers and bits and pieces — letters, cards, notebooks, shopping lists — things that, to him, looked like rubbish.

    After he left, I spent two weeks unpacking them all again.

    I remember being particularly drawn to the shopping lists. So many of them contained the same things, repeated from week to week. Ordinary things. Everyday things. But that was exactly what made them feel important.

    They were traces of her life.

    It didn’t really matter what the marks said. What mattered was that she had made them. Her hand had moved across those scraps of paper. She had thought those thoughts, written those words, lived those ordinary days.

    Just making marks

    Today, I can see that my drawing has been reaching towards something similar.

    Not being concerned with how the marks look together, but rather that they are there. Not waiting for inspiration or the right subject. Just making marks. Making a mark. Saying: I’m here.

    Not concerning myself with the why, at least not today, but rather giving in to the compulsion, letting the anxiety fall away, and making a drawing.

    Holding on to the thought that perhaps one day I’ll be pleased I did.

    Photograph of Michael’s exhibition statement from his 2008 MA show, headed “The Archive” with “Michael Nobbs” beneath it. The statement reads: “Recently, I have been seeing myself as little more than a collector of the small pieces of ephemera that pass through my fingers as I live my life. Notes, lists, doodles, the occasional more deliberate drawing (and even the odd chocolate bar) have taken on a great importance since my mother’s death. I’ve realised that often all that is left to show we have lived our lives are the small scraps we make and leave with very little thought for their content or potential longevity. The many shopping lists found in the pockets of my mother’s coats and the bottom of her shopping bags as I cleared out her house in March this year are an incredibly important reminder of a life lived. Prompted to preserve and record fragments from my own life, I am searching for ways to collect, archive and present them.” Along the bottom are four small photographs of everyday traces: a mug with a note, a handwritten list, a page containing a drawing and writing, and a small electronic object beside another handwritten note.
    Close-up from Michael’s 2008 MA exhibition showing a small lined page from his mother’s handwritten diary, preserved inside a clear plastic bag and pinned to the wall. The page contains several dated entries from late December 2005 and early January 2006. The handwriting is faint in places, but readable lines include references to spending Christmas with Michael and George, “Michael has looked after me very well,” feeling “very much better” after a rest, and, in the final entry, “Am starting to feel much better! Am able to do a few more things.” Behind the bag are enlarged fragments of handwriting and part of another photograph.
    Installation view from Michael’s 2008 MA exhibition. A grid of clear zip-lock bags is pinned directly to a white wall, each containing small pieces of saved ephemera: handwritten notes and lists, envelopes, scraps of paper and other everyday fragments. Some of the papers are faded and creased, and two include small printed “Santa Claus” motifs. Below them sits an iMac showing a colourful computer window, while to the right a small wall-mounted screen displays a blue-toned face. Handwritten Post-it notes, a CD and other scraps are also attached around the installation.
    Black-ink self-portrait drawn across a folded sheet of off-white paper on the morning of 15 September 2026. Michael’s face fills most of the page in loose, uneven lines: large round glasses, one strongly outlined eye, nose, beard and closely cropped head. The top and right side of the head are built up with dense layers of cross-hatching. Along the bottom are handwritten notes including the date, “15.9.26,” “6.00 am,” and words about drawing himself before making tea because he feels he has to, ending with the smaller phrase, “perhaps one day I’ll be pleased I did.” A dark blue pen and an orange pen lie beside the drawing.
    Close-up of the lower-right corner of Michael’s black-ink self-portrait from 15 September 2026. Part of the jaw, neck and dark cross-hatched marks are visible above several lines of large, loose handwriting. The text reads, in part, “before I’ve made my tea because I feel I have to” and, in smaller writing at the bottom right, “perhaps one day I’ll be pleased I did.” The paper is slightly buckled and layered over another sheet beneath it.

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  • Finding comfort in the uncomfortable

    A wider view of my early-morning drawing setup on a crocheted blanket. My black pencil self-portrait sits open in a small homemade pocket sketchbook beside a short yellow Blackwing pencil. Behind it is a tray with a round wooden-framed mirror reflecting part of my face and glasses, a green teapot, an orange Stanley mug of tea, and a small ceramic jug.

    At the moment, the act of drawing isn’t a comfort to me; it’s more of a compulsion. However, there are ways that I draw that can add comfort to the act.

    Today, I reached for one of my familiar homemade pocket sketchbooks and drew with an old and rather weather-beaten Blackwing 3.

    As autopilot took over and I began to draw the face in the mirror, there was a definite sense of “ahh” that softened the usual anxiety around making the first marks on the page.

    Close-up of a black pencil self-portrait drawn across an open homemade pocket sketchbook. The drawing shows my head and shoulders, with large round glasses and a patterned top. The fold of the sketchbook runs horizontally through the middle of the face. A short yellow Blackwing pencil lies beside the sketchbook on a crocheted blanket.

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  • Drawing through unease

    A tea tray rests on a plaid duvet cover. On it sist an earthenware *Louise Go Gently* mug, a green *Teapot for Life*, and a small brown pharmacy bag — the newest object in the familiar scene. In front of the tray sits a open sketchbook, the drawing in it depicts is of the mug and pharmacy bag from the tray. The drawing is made with with grapa mixture of crayon and coloured pencil: a Blackwing 3 for the structure, a Derwent Lightfast *Warm Earth* for the bag, and a Faber-Castell Polychromos white pencil for the highlights. There are two large block of colour made with Neocolor ii crayon — Black for the top page background and Purple for the bottom. The text on the top page of the drawing reads "A new addition to my tray — a bag containing a five day course of antibiotics. The lines are restless, layered, and uncertain — showing the artist’s continuing effort to steady both hand and mind.
    A close-up of the. sketchbook shows the pharmacy bag and Go Gently mug drawing in more detail. The layered pencil marks show repeated attempts to find the form, the paper lightly burnished where the pencil has pressed down. The image carries both restlessness and care — the marks revealing anxiety and persistence in equal measure.
    A close view of the sketchbook page showing the delicate graphite lines of a cup and saucer. The paper’s grain catches the light; the strokes are faint, tentative, and broken. A few erased beginnings remain visible. The image feels quiet and vulnerable — a small attempt to steady the hand amid unease.
    An open sketchbook lies on a bed beside tray of tea things. On the right-hand page, a few trembling graphite lines describe the edge of a cup and saucer. The marks are sparse, hesitant, and uneven — a visual trace of anxiety and restlessness. The facing page carries loose handwritten text added several days later, the words slanting and uneven, echoing the same tremor that ran through the drawing itself.

    The drawings that trouble me

    Lately, I’ve been thinking about the drawings that make me uncomfortable, embarrass me — the ones I’d like to rip out of my sketchbook and forget.

    This week there have been two of them (so far!): A Few Ragged Lines, drawn in the museum café just after my dental appointment, and A New Addition to My Tray, made from bed this morning.

    In the café, I managed only a few hesitant marks before realising how shaky I was. The drawing stopped almost as soon as it began. Today, a few days later, I added the text and then began A New Addition to My Tray — my first attempt at drawing since that trip to the dentist. I realised quickly that I was still dealing with anxiety. The text on A Few Ragged Lines is ragged and uncertain — I corrected myself more than once — and in A New Addition to My Tray I kept reworking the small brown pharmacy bag. The more I drew, the more uneasy I felt.

    On embarrassment and honesty

    There’s a particular kind of embarrassment that comes with this — when a drawing feels raw, clumsy, too revealing. Some of that embarrassment is about what the drawing might expose, but more immediately it’s about how it looks: awkward, unresolved, unskilled. It’s the discomfort of seeing something I’ve made that doesn’t live up to how I wanted it to be. For a while I often can’t bear to open my sketchbook and look at what I’ve made.

    After a few days (sometimes hours), those feelings can shift. With A Few Ragged Lines, that has happened — I have begun to see the original lines that I made on Thursday, not as failures, but as traces of persistence, an honest snapshot of a difficult moment in my life. The trembling, the awkwardness, the unresolved forms: they all speak of the effort to keep going, even when calm attention won’t quite come. Maybe, in time, I’ll be able to see today’s drawing in a similar light…

    Preserving the work as it is

    Part of my practice now is to preserve and reveal my sketchbooks exactly as they are. Once I add the date to a drawing, it’s finished — a small record of that moment, however incomplete or uneasy it feels. I want to resist the temptation to tidy, edit, or hide these pages. I want them to remain a true reflection of the moment that they were made, however that feels and whatever they reveal.

    I’ve been thinking about whether adding text to A Few Ragged Lines days later sits outside my usual way of working. Because the text was written on the opposite page and dated separately, it still feels fitting somehow. Perhaps it simply reflects how the drawing continued to work on me for a few days before I could meet it again. It’s something to keep in mind for future pages.

    The practice of staying

    Embarrassment, I realise, is often just the shock of honesty — the moment when a drawing shows something we didn’t mean to reveal, whether that’s in its awkward form or in the feelings it carries. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also what makes the work alive. Those uneven marks and half-resolved shapes tell the truth of how things were: the body still unsettled, the hand trying to steady itself, the mind circling back to breath.

    I’m realising that these uneasy drawings belong to the practice just as much as the easy ones do. Maybe they are the practice — the record of staying with myself, however briefly, in a moment I’d rather have avoided.

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