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Joe Bryant

I draw at 1am. Nobody has asked me to.

A bedroom at the wrong hour. A train full of people lit by phones. A queue climbing towards something nobody has questioned. They all start as ordinary places and then get away from me.

I make them on a reMarkable 2, which is excellent at producing broken lines, unstable black masses and the sort of correction that refuses to disappear. I am not interested in cleaning that out. Half of what you are looking at is mistakes I have decided to keep.

High-contrast drawing of a long single-file queue winding up an impossible white ridge toward a lit doorway, with a dark red mass beneath the rock.

01

The Inevitable

The queue climbs a route that makes no sense. Nobody turns round.

NoteI drew the destination as a lit doorway, then filled almost everything around it by hand. The dark red mass is the only colour I allowed in. I still do not want to decide whether it is trapped under the rock or breaking through it.

Black-and-white drawing of two facing rows of commuters lit by their phones, while a lone figure stands in the doorway at the end of the carriage and looks back.

02

Too Late

Everyone is looking at a phone. One person is looking back.

NoteI drew this on the train, on a device barely distinguishable from the ones I was complaining about. Oh hello there, Mr Ego. Caught the bastard.

Black-and-white drawing of a figure curled on a bare mattress beneath a single bulb, with a second figure in the lit doorway crossed through by heavy marks.

03

U OK?

Someone asked. The words were much smaller than what had happened.

NoteThe question is the right size for a normal Tuesday and useless against what is actually in the room. He is pretending he does not know what is wrong. He knows. They both saw it. She worked it out. It took me ten years.

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