Drawing from life, even when the work isn't

Almost nothing I paint exists. That's exactly why I draw things that do.

You can't invent convincingly from memory alone — you end up drawing the idea of a tree rather than a tree. Half an hour in front of a real one gives you the things you'd never have thought to make up: the way a branch thickens where it leaves the trunk, how much of it is dead, how little of it is symmetrical.

What I take from it

• How things are built, not how they look
• What weight looks like — how a heavy thing sits differently to a light one
• Wear, damage and repair, which is where most of the character is

Reference isn't copying. It's the vocabulary you invent with.

None of it appears directly. It just means that when I'm making something up, I'm making it out of things I've actually seen.