Process

What is consciousness? How much about the human mind remains misunderstood or completely in the dark? If we can accept the need for understanding mental health, then why is treatment often elusive or unavailable? This past year and a half has been unprecedented, and I have seen friends and family struggle under the weight of grief, anxiety, and depression. We’re all on a journey. There are signs of hope, and for me, art is an escape and a constant in my life.

I’ve had some time to think about my work and revisit some ideas that got buried, left behind, or neglected. I need to clear my own head so new creative impulses can emerge.

Initial Sketch:

When I submitted this sketch, I thought the concept was a home run, but the client didn’t like the direction and walked away. It happens, (hey, their call, even if it’s wrong).

Finished and refined line drawing with colours blocked in:

I’ve been working on this project for a while, at my own pace. What a luxury to have the time to make things right. I’ll walk you through the process. To start, all of the elements were edited, inked and refined to establish a finished set of lines, and then the colours were blocked in. You can see some other elements were dropped, like the scaffolding and laser beam.

Refinement of colours/line weight:

Colours will be edited later in the process, so I limited the palette to 4 colours. Everything gets overlayed with a 50% highlight and then it gets spot reduced to let the underlying colour come through. With this piece, I also decided to work with an additional shadow as well.

The initial sketch had a ladder, which I found clunky and unworkable, so I drafted a scissor jack in its place. I’m undecided about whether to include the technicians/mechanics in the final. What do you think?

  Final image:

Bright Lights

Last month I had a television crew at the studio. Interview and filming for an upcoming series about art and artists who work on the boundaries of art. I was nervous going into this, but the crew from Whistlestop put me at ease and made the whole process enjoyable.

I was working on a tight deadline during the filming, turning around sketches for an assignment for the New York Times that day. Trying to get the right expressions on a pair of privileged tots was not going according to plan. That's just how things go, and having to concentrate on getting things right gave me a focus beyond the camera pointed in my direction.

 

Sometimes getting things right takes a few tries. I think this took 9 rounds in total. I was struggling with baby-like faces and expressions, but in the end, I'm glad that we could work this out, get things right.

You can see the article here. Always great to work with Minh Uong. The starts off with a hoax about genetic testing for preschoolers, that people actually bought into. Competition between parents getting their children into the right preschool is getting more and more intense. How far will things go? This may just be the next step.