I have this piece of artwork, pretty much done – but as with all such projects, the closer one gets to being done, the slower the process gets.
Having spent so much time on it, I feel it would be a shame to not make it the very most it can possibly be, hoping I have the sense to stop before making the piece ‘overdone’.
Mostly, I am doing fine details right now: Distant ropes with details which could not be thinner without splitting the atoms that make up the colors I am laying down, lines thinner than a single stray hair hanging from the brush. The very edge of that single hair, the only thing I am allowing to touch the surface.
It struck me, while sitting outside for a break, staring off into the soft and fuzzy world around me – what strange things I am doing to myself in this…
My eyesight with my current glasses, which are now 7 years old and thoroughly scratched throughout, is around 20 over 140, at best. I drive much the way a t-rex would, were t-rexes allowed to drive in America, sorting out the shapes around me through movement – that movement allowing me to reason out shapes and distances in my head, creating a virtual world in which to drive, which has about the same resolution as “Battlezone” on the Atari 2600 (T-Rexes love atari 2600).
Still, on the highway or on the side streets, I weave in and out between the enemy cars with little difficulty – practice makes perfect.
I hate to admit this is a driving factor in my padded hues and softened worlds, but it is a likely cause; though I can easily read all of the micro print in any denomination of bills, and with my eyes follow the finest clusters of nerves beneath my skin, the world two feet or more away is made of peach fuzz and soft cotton – including any reference I could have on my screen or on my wall… perhaps another reason I never use reference images at all… though I prefer to say that it is better to imagine than to copy.
Though from my memory, I know the world is actually crisp, jagged, and dirty – it is not the world I see in my head, it is not the texture within my dreams, or my thoughts – but a foreign world, a strangely filtered version of existence, that no longer seems correct to me. I often wonder if, when I buy a new pair of glasses, if doing so will throw me off. I suppose this is one of two reasons I wouldn’t go for surgery, the other being that gambling with vision is an extra scary thing for one who makes a living on visual art. Also, the thought of watching a needle going into my eye, gives me bad flashbacks of my time as Flash Gordon.
I’ve decided, aside from more details, pushing the darks and lights for separation and depth, the piece needs something more… something to close in the design on one side, something to open up the design on the other end. It is already my favorite painting – but perhaps, as I said before, this is why it deserves just a little more attention.
The printers will be open tomorrow, and with luck, I’ll be taking this piece back in for a final scan, ordering artist’s prints, and if everything comes out fine – shipping this one out.
Today, I am 13 days past the day I expected to be shipping it; The other two are also running later than expected, but I can’t wait to get the next one out and start sketching the one after. I have another commission penciled in for September now – and since I really want to get the children’s book in stores by October – that commission will probably be the last for this year unless someone offers me more money than I would feel right in taking.
I did terribly at promoting my comic book – perhaps a lot of that had to do with the stock market’s bottom falling out the very day I released it. From there I kept waiting for a better time for promoting frivolous things, and that time never came. I never submitted it to publications, though Comic Related offered to review it anyway (they never did though), I never spammed people with it, well because I don’t spam people with anything outside of announcements on on my blogs, and I think my chief selling point was “it is this hideous and terrible thing you’ll be ashamed to laugh at”… And though I signed up for several conventions, I think the outcome would have been much better if I actually showed up at those conventions, and brought the book.
… Anyway, all those things I did wrong, I do not want to do the same with the book, because that work is more inspired, more a labor of love, and less …less purposefully hideous/silly/offensive.
I realize I am wandering from topic to topic, but I have been up all night.
I guess what I am trying to get at, is that I wish I were awake enough to drive for tacos. Flash Gordon loves tacos, so do T-Rexes.
