The BOB (Bag of Belief) concept drawings are an integral part of the evolution of Ian Cheng’s BOB, a new development in his practice that has involved the creation of an artificial intelligence, unveiled at his major solo show at The Serpentine, London (April-May, 2018). These sketches comprise the material he submits to his digital animators in order to relay the qualities that he would like the digital environments, props, and character to possess. There is a poignancy to the idea that for all of the sophisticated technology involved in the making of the works such as BOB, Cheng is most easily able to capture the visual essence of this artwork and life form with pen and paper. The immediacy between a concept and pen and paper is apparent. Many drawings depict half-formed thoughts or similar but not quite final versions of the character we see constantly evolving on screen. The drawings hold clues not just to the evolution of BOB, but also to forms that may appear in the future, as it grows and learns. We see in this set of 42 drawings the artist resolving his ideas and the act of creation in progress. Annotations allude to Cheng’s own questions about the purpose and direction of this work as it takes shape, offering an unadulterated insight into the context into which BOB was brought into being.