I've been stuck on this charcoal drawing of the convention center in Atlanta, based on photos taken there last year.

I went back to Tate Modern to look at City of the Gods by Michele Zalopany to see if it could help me. It could. The darks were so much darker than mine. It was loose and free but at the same time structued and composed. There is a tremendous sense of space and depth. Also there was a lot going on with the texture of the charcoal.

In an effort to get moving on my drawing I went to Cornelissen to buy some of the Tortillons. These are the rods of tightly rolled paper that look like pencils. I also bought some Faber Castell PITT compressed charcol in four different grades, from extra soft to extra hard.

These were a revelation. They were so much darker and richer than the compressed charcoal I'd been using before, which in turn has so much more body than the regular charcoal. Immediately I had the far greater tonal range that I'd hitherto been lacking.

This was great but I still felt like I wasn't going as far as I could, it was like I was struck dumb before the easel and couldn't do any more to the drawing. I've felt this before, you just have to push on and do another one, keep moving.

With that I was happy to take the drawing to the framers ready for the Jerwood submission on Saturday. I know there is still a long way to go but I feel this is a good indication of where I am now, so whether or not I get in doesn't really matter, it will be a fair judgement of where I'm at.

Moved the studio up into the loft. Finally got round to starting work on the watercolour for Kevin (KTH) and kicked off a self portrait. The idea with the latter is to spend half an hour a day on it...

It's called a Spine Gap.

The "Dummy" for the Artists Book I'm doing arrived at the weekend from Micropress.

I'm glad Jody pursuaded me to get this done before going to print. Whilst the paper and the cover are exactly what I was after, the way it folds over leaves a big gap in the centre. Need to ask Micropress if there is anything I can do about this such as have fewer pages or use a different style of binding. We'll have to see.

Bit fed up about this, I thought it was strong work, one certainly the equal of the piece that got in last year.

They are certainly being selective this year, only 47 pieces are going into the exhibition. Of course it's not about winning prizes and getting into competitions, it's about doing the work. Just need to get on with it.

I had this idea for a still life when I was passing through Gatwick Airport the other week and saw this plastic box filled with all the unsafe items confiscated from passengers at security.

Over the past week I've bought several pairs of scissors, including a great find of nine of all different shapes and sizes in an antiques shop in Rochester.

Started playing around with compositions today. I think the lower the point of view the better, it kind of makes them look like their flying through the air.

Didn't get into the portrait competition. Plan now to do a new version of the painting addressing what I think are its weaknesses. It's a pity the feedback from competitions is a simply binary Yes/No - it would be great to get a crit.

I think the painting was too big and cropped to tightly, the later being a product of me messing up the measurements.

Also I plan to revisit the painting I started but didn't submit last year, again using what I've learnt from this year's effort. I broke off working on that because I couldn't work out what needed doing to it. I've got a pretty good idea now. Plus when it was in my studio alongside this years piece it got a much more positive response from visitors - I think there might be something in it which can be teased out.

We'll see.

Completed portrait of my sister Sarah-Louise Young and submitted it for the portrait competition. I've learnt a lot doing this painting and feel a lot less hung up about painting now, I'm happy to just get on with it and see what happens on the canvas.

In Miami for a few days holiday. Made some drawings of the beachfront hotels and the city rooftops.

Miami Art Museum were showing a Vik Muniz retrospective. I'd seen an example of his work before at LACMA. It is really inventive stuff the way he uses all sorts of object to make images. I have a lot more time for the works where he had created an original composition rather than using an existing photographic or art historical source. It really made me think about still life. I really want to get back do doing still lives again but I've not been happy with the results I've been getting. Before seeing the show I'd been thinking of making a still life based on accumulated clutter, making a virtue of something I find annoying to the point of being neurotic about it - worrying about the fact that everything is not neatly tidied away or fulfilling a purpose in its place.

I've got a photo somewhere of a bunch of kids toys that had been dumped on the street which some of the Muniz pieces brought to mind.

First proper day in the studio this year, and the first since moving from Vanguard Court to the temporary set up in the new house. Morning was eaten into by chores, visiting Nick the framer and going to Atlantis.

Got down to work in the afternoon, my sister came round for a sitting. Did a few drawings in an effort to nail the composition and also took some photos using the digital camera hooked up to the Indy.




Finished with a small Alla Prima paint study. Great relief to have finally started painting. Need to keep the momentum going now.

Went to the Jeff Wall at the Tate Modern.

I was struck by a few of the works. Steves Farm, Steveston is an expansive landscape view with a path and a stream receeding away from the viewer. Reminded me of the Van Gogh drawings I'd seen before xmas at the Metropolitan.

This work and others like The Crooked Path, The Storyteller and A Hunting Scene present the sort of rural/urban hinterlands that I've found myself drawn to both around South London and in the US,particularly the Denver Freightdrawing and painting I've been working on.

Fantastic composition in Dawn, all diagonals, interlocking to create a taught complete space.

Wall does something similar in the still life Diagonal Composition. The whole space is interesting, it's a complete composition.

It was an exhibition that I got a lot from in terms of pointers for my own practice.

Despite getting behind in the run up to xmas, a lot of travel and leting myself get run down, I got my 365 daily drawings done.

It's been a great discipline and looking back at the first book I can really see the progress I've made. Need to build on this in the new year.

Cornelissen had run out of the landscape bound books of Surry paper I've been using all year so I had to buy a portrait one which I found really difficult to use. Ended up cutting the pages out and sticking them into my previous landscape book.

For 2006 I bought one of their landscape books with protective sheets, more expensive but actually turned out better as the Sharpie pens I bought in New York blot through the Surry pages and are caught by the protective sheets.

In New York at the end of a whistle-stop trip round the US. Was able to visit the Van Gogh Drawings exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

A lot of the pieces were produced using ink and graphite, the graphite giving body to the ink line. The ones I was most drawn to were those with an interesting use of space, a great depth of field, interlocking lines.

The transformation from the heavy drawings done in Holland and the bright and airy ones done in Paris and the South of France is amazing. It's like the sun coming out, I thought this in particular in Shed with Sunflowers 1887.

The drawing View of Arles with Irisis in the Forground 1888 makes fantastic use of tone to convey distance.

A lot of the drawings make use of a high far horizon, again conveying distance.

I liked the drawing, The Yellow House 1888, the horizon runs along the centre of the image, with the house breaking out of it, seen corner on. I could use this in the work I'm doing based on the restaurants and retail parks around Denver.

Also in New York, I was able to stock up on Sharpie Ultra Fine Point permenant markers. I love these pens, the ink sinks into the paper, giving you far more than just a line. With other pens I've been using, the ink seems to sit on top of the paper, it's far less rich.

Had the open studio this weekend. It was really good to have people come in and comment on the work. I worked on some small try out paintings for the studio wall. Then I worked on a painting based on the Devner Freight drawing: