Hi i'm Jono and if you're new here, I do pencil drawings. The most successful drawing I've ever
done is this piece called handle. I often get asked about it so I thought i'd talk a bit about
how it came to be and what it meant for my career. Also a huge thank you once again to Squarespace
for sponsoring this video. The idea for handle had been floating around my head for about a
year before i actually started drawing it I just finished the drawing in its grip and I was able
to leave the gallery that had been representing me at the time. Usually when I start a new piece
there's a lot of deliberation and it takes a really long time before I am happy with the
composition but when I actually started composing handle, things just fell into place. I'd taken
the process and planning shots in July the year before, but nothing materialized. The idea just
kind of lived in my head and slowly developed until about a year later when I was chatting
to my uncle who's a wildlife photographer. We managed to find this shot that he had taken
of an elephant which just perfectly suited the composition and everything just fell into place.
I just want to add something here, this hardly ever happens -compositions don't just fall into
place. Most of the time it's, as I said, it's a lot of deliberating and the process is quite a
struggle, like this fight against some unknown force to bring this composition together and
to make it work and I don't think that needs to be a perfect easy thing for an artwork to
be successful. I don't think that's a marker of a successful artwork- most of my works that I'm
really proud of came into the world kicking and screaming, so I don't think this is something like
a standard to hold myself to at all, but that's also something I think that made Handle special.
I'd been wanting to draw water for a really long time. The last time I'd attempted to draw water
was with an artwork called Fibonacci and that was such a humbling experience.
The piece took six months to complete and it wasn't entirely pleasant. It
was really a fight against myself to try and keep myself coming back to that drawing
and to finish it. There were so many times that I wanted to abandon that piece and I almost equated
that to drawing water because in that particular artwork the water is just so violent and chaotic
and to try and find any kind of structure in that, to mimic that texture was for me just beyond what
I was capable of. But I am proud of that artwork but I thought it was time for me to see if my
relationship with drawing water had changed and um and it had, so handle was the first of the
series that had water as a constant. I then went on to draw Mask and then Ritual and finally Venus.
I drew handle in the small spare room of my apartment. I barely had enough space
to walk around the drawing, but there was a coziness to working on it like this at home.
It took me around three months to complete and I remember for the most part enjoying
it. I worked late into the nights listening to audiobooks which really helped me stay
focused. At the time I was struggling a lot with concentration, but having the work at home and
being able to come and go in short stints of focus felt like a gentle way of bringing it to life.
Although I drew Handle at a stressful time in my life, it doesn't bring back any negative emotions.
The composition is really simple, the hands are nurturing and the shapes compliment each other.
It doesn't have an anchor in the real world like most of my other pieces did at the time.
It's floating in blank space. It also perfectly fit into the golden ratio grid which i used
to compose most of my artworks. After I completed it I had no idea that it would
be one of the most successful drawings I ever created. It was the first video to get over a
million views on YouTube and the first one of my print editions to sell out completely.
The video is now sitting at over 3 million views and I get asked about it on almost a daily basis.
I feel the real sense of gratitude towards this piece. It supported me in ways I could
never have imagined and opened a whole new chapter in my career it looked after me
and in a lot of ways it's one of the primary reasons I'm able to continue to do what I do.
Before in this video I just want to give a quick shoutout to this video sponsor
Squarespace. I've been working with them for a really long time and they've helped my career in
a huge way, not only in sponsoring these videos and helping me maintain this channel, but
they played an important role in the early stages of my career. It was so important for
me to have an online portfolio and to find a way to make it easy for clients to find my work and
to get in touch with me and I just felt that Squarespace did that effortlessly. I never had
to patch or upgrade anything. I could register a domain with them or set up an online store,
and most importantly I could design a portfolio and show my work the way that I wanted to.
Also every time I got stuck their amazing support team helped me out instantly. So if you're looking
at building a website, give Squarespace a try. And if you decide that you love them, use this offer
code and get ten percent off your first purchase. So that's some of the story behind handle and what
it just meant to me and enjoying it and and how it's affected my career and my life afterwards
which is something i'm incredibly grateful for. It's really been a piece that's been incredibly
close to my heart and that has protected me almost and held me, um but if you'd like to hear the
story behind any other particular artworks let me know in the comments. I really enjoy reading
all the comments. If you found this interesting please leave a like it helps the channel out
in a massive way. As always, thanks for the support and I'll see you guys in the next one
bye