I've had some ADD lately, for the past 8 years to be exact. Has it been diagnosed? No. I don't take pills for it. I merely do as many different kinds of things all the time to medicate. Just like you. A constant fascination with art, video, fashion, furniture. Design, humor, zombies.
At any rate, I've been drawing/designing lately in a fashion in which I've never done before. Using the pen tool in photoshop to create asymmetric landscapes. My fascination started when I did some style frames for Citbank through Brand New School.
I was at wit's end to make something I'd not seen before. Good luck with that one. But, this came close, as far as in the commercial landscape. It's MC Escher mixed with who knows what. And they're a challenge and I lose track of time when I make them. Very much like editing video, and the Justins shorts I make from time to time.
Fast forward to me getting invited to partake in a group show at the ever-popular and highly awesome Gallery 1988 in Hollywood. The theme is 'Memes', which, I needed to look up, is a name for trendy, viral internet videos.
Double Rainbow, Charlie Sheen, Leeroy Jenkins. You get it.
I love type, and love this new asymmetric world I've been the architect of as of late, so why not mash the two together and see what happens.
Here's an early WIP for my 'Meme' themed piece. Actually, it's a not-that-early WIP, but it's the earliest screengrab I took. I'll take more earlier on, if anyone cares to see.
No clue where the duotone-ish color palette came from, because I usually struggle so much with color these days, always wanting to add more and more and every color in the rainbow. And then I simplified, thought about light, and luckily came up with that and I seemed to enjoy it. I thought having the left hand sides of the buildings the lighter shade of off-white-yellowy was a good way to make this thing manageable for me. Shadows are cool, tops of buildings are the hot orangey-yellowy. Simple. Sometimes I forget to just keep it simple. And in order to wrap my head around this, I needed to stay simple.
Now I needed to add detail, so here's the next WIP.
I don't do any pencil sketches for these. I just start right in with shapes. I love happy accidents. It's the only reason I make art. If I always knew what it was I wanted to make, I'm not sure I'd be as prone to make it. Once it's done in my head, sometimes, I lose motivation to make it in real life. So this style is perfect for that mentality, as I just wing it.
And we all 'wing' life, get off your high horse.
Now I needed to add more detail, and my buddy Bryce told me to add tiny little chimneys so there was a bigger difference in big to small. He's a smart man. He alsod told me to add some texture. So, I went back into a lot of the shapes, re-selected them, made a new layer on top, and used one of many brushes on it to make it look just right. I've got a lot of brushes, but they're all free. I don't make my own. It probably shows. Gulp.
Here's a near final!
My eye still goes everywhere, but I don't mind. I think I'll still tweak values for an hour or so more, to hone what it is that needs to be honed.
I intend to print it out at 24 wide by 12-15 tall, I think. I want to make a series of 20, just to see how they sell, if they sell.
If you'd like one, let me know and I'll print one up!
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment