Author: hamishmacdonald



My first illustrated book with Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach is out!



I had the honour of being interviewed for a website featuring lots of creative folk in different fields.

I babbled about my background, my work, and my process here on Work_Spiration.

Last year, Craig and I created pieces for an art event in Inverness, and this year it’s being remounted, but bigger, at Eden Court. The “Highland LGBT Lives” exhibit will be on display throughout February as part of LGBT History Month.

This is the piece I made last year, which will be in the show again this year (though when I look at it, I can see how my abilities have inched along since then, but I figure there’s no point re-doing it):

Craig and I decided we should include some new work, so this is the piece I did after last weekend’s agonizing. The Bristol board turned out to be awful to work on, though. (I thought I liked Bristol board, but now it seems hellishly bleedy.)

And I’m not sure why, but we also felt we should include some other things. I still love this wee Wick gutter-woman, which felt in keeping with the Highlands theme:

And then I had a fish painting, except it was a mackerel, ’cause mackerels are pretty. Except that in Wick they fished for herring, so that meant doing a new painting. So here’s what I came up with (a happy accident; I nearly threw it out partway through):

The text is from Neil Gunn’s Silver Darlings, a beautiful novel set in this part of Scotland.

Craig also had a fun idea for a piece we could do together, called “Out/Not Out”, a comment on the kind of art gay men often buy for themselves, versus what they put on display when the parents come ’round:

I’m sitting in my office, drawing, and listening to previews of 1980s albums I used to listen to while drawing in my bedroom.

Most of these really don’t stand the test of time. Back then I heard them as epic sagas about mythic themes, but now I realise they’re all just love songs by rock bands.

Still it feels very good to be doing this.

In the Illustration section of this site, I posted images from my 2013-2014 sketchbook because I wanted to demonstrate my illustration style and the kinds of things I think and write about.

I’m well into my next sketchbook, and that’s satisfying my need to capture my thoughts and practice drawing, but that means I’m not posting things here like I used to. What’s the point in having the content in two places, if I’m going to scan this book and add it to the site later, too? (Which I likely will.)

But then I’m not putting anything here.

What do you think? (To leave a comment on these posts, click on the title, which will take you to the post’s own page, where you can enter a message.)

I can’t tell if it’s charming or ugly, but I just turned a favourite, worn-out old pair of corduroys into a scarf and I love it!