DOCUMENT:
Chronicles of Project 25:365
Book Progress
I haven’t decided yet if I’ll count working on leather as part of my 365. Right now I’ve almost finished the test version of the new book (it still needs its tie) and I'm starting the layout for the final design.
(Red Leather Book; Pencil on Paper)
The original drawing was for a book without the front flap and it wasn’t drawn to size, so I have to redesign it. The original drawing is below.
(Ink on Paper; drawn after a trip to the ER for a malfunctioning gallbladder and still high as a holy kite on Dilaudid)
I once told a friend that every dragon I draw just looks like a dog, so now that I have a dog, I make all my dragons look like him.
Fun With Scissors (#4ish)
(Digital; drawn on my phone)
Scissors are an excellent all-purpose tool that can keep the home safe and organized.
Sometimes I Ruin Shit...
…and no one dies so it’s fine.
If you’re under the assumption you’re getting through this reality without fucking up, you’re in for serious hurt. As an obsessive Type A monster-person, I am always in a state of serious hurt.
(Gouache Over Ink on Paper)
Also a lesson in cropping. Because I want to burn it slightly less when it’s cropped.
Small-Scale Test Run
(Pencil on paper)
Drawing patterns for book designs is a lot like drawing architectural plans…
…aside from the fact that buildings don’t fold. It sure would be neat if they did.*
(Videogames and websites are the best representations of folding architectural spaces and, not surprisingly, the best storytelling media we have.)
I like books a lot, but I only bind them for myself and only when I need a new journal. Thus: I am not spectacularly good at binding. I’m okay with that. Because I always try new things without mastering the old things, I have to do small versions of the new things to make sure I’m not about to burn through 100s of dollars worth of leather.
* fairly certain this was a sentence that came up during brainstorming for CONTROL over at Remedy, and when Danielewski wrote House of Leaves, and when the labyrinth section of Silent Hill 2 was designed and ad infinitum….
Color and Play
There are two facets to learning how to work with color:
Studying color theory (I recommend James Gurney's book Color and Light).
Playing with color with no planned content.
Doing the first will help you learn how to really see the colors around you. Like most perception, how we understand color is affected by how we think about it and what we expect to encounter.
The best way to eradicate any bias is through gaining information (in this case reading color theory explained by an expert) and shifting from an anticipatory engagement with the world to a perceptual engagement. Our simple little human brains really like pattern sorting and anticipation of future patterns (this is why people become gambling addicts and why dopamine plays such a massive role in this type of addiction. For more info, I recommend checking out the Radiolab episode about stochasticity, available here.). It takes practice to see what is rather than anticipate what might be.
Playing with color is easy: just make a big ole field of color and see how it works out. I like to do this on journal pages and then write on them or find a splotch and turn it into something. This is just play. It’s not going anywhere. It’s not doing anything fancy. It’s just fun. And it lets me figure out how different color combos work together.
I also really like digital work for color play. Digital is nice because you don’t have to pay for all the fancy paints; you have infinite colors on hand. I do most of my playful drawing on my phone because it’s always around (it has a stylus). I do almost all of my serious illustration style work using a Wacom and Corel Painter.
Distant City
(Digital; drawn on my phone)
I don't know if I dream about architecture because I studied architecture or if I studied architecture because I was always dreaming about architecture.
Much like my waking life, my dreams are dominated by landscapes and built environments while humans make brief and often unimpressive cameos.
And yet I hate drawing architecture.
I don’t know why I'm like this.
When I Say Anything Counts...
…I mean anything counts.
(Pencil on paper; pattern for new book)
This may seem off topic, but I swear it feels relevant: I like patterns and networks; I’m not particularly invested in examining the nodes of such things. It’s the ephemera between the nodes I like. The abstract floaty bits.
I suspect this type of proclivity is hard-wired. It’s as defining to my me-ness as my eye color and tendency to forget where I put my keys (to be fair, the keys are nodes and not patterns, so I tend to forget they exist until I have to drive my car to get the food I wish wasn’t required for my existing because it, too, is a node, but a possibly squishy or slimy node and those are insufferable qualities). Even if this trait isn’t something you experience inherently, it’s possible that I can explain it to you. Which is useful because…
…being unattached to nodes means I'm very good at not being attached to discernable attributes of achievement. And after going back and looking at the sludgy kiddie pool of social media after 4 years away, I have a whole new understanding (more of a suspicion, really, but for the sake of my ego I’m going with “understanding”) of why artists fucking hate themselves. Jesus jumped-up Christ on a cross, that shit is poison. It mimics a network, but it’s just a straight line of shitty performative emptiness, slid down the pipe of observation like a maker's fair version of the human centipede.
No one should be touching that shit. No. One.
The presentation of what it means to be an artist on social media is a grotesquerie. It is a monstrous amalgamation of what algorithms would think art is, if algorithms could think (don’t make me shout about AI). The benchmarks of followers, the weird forced emergence of trends (if I ever see another manicured hand making neo-surrealist tripe prints with a little press I will go out to my garage and hang myself with my extension cord), all of it is a lie. Stop. Listening.
I don’t know if there’s a way to use social media without it poisoning your mind. I know it feels like it’s necessary. And that’s probably the worst part. But, I guess this is one of those places where harm reduction might be apt, in lieu of the perfect solution. So here's my attempt:
The lie in the social media structure is that you have to somehow fit in to the algorithm to be worthwhile. You have to be an acceptable node. But that’s not how real networks function. Networks emerge in the ether from great complexity. Healthy networks cannot be strung between clone nodes. “Over-specialize and you breed in weakness. It’s slow death.”
I’ve been telling people for the last month that they can do ANYTHING for 365 and it counts. If you say you’re going to draw, any drawing counts. If you say you’re going to write, any writing counts. Even a line, even a single word. The only reason they don’t think they can do it is because they’ve picked up the notion that art (any art), must be this audience-ready performance of utmost perfection that can fit beautifully and effortlessly into the simulation of life that is the social media landscape. That landscape is the equivalent of us taking the worst part about being a person (lying about everything to seem effortless in front of others), suping it up on ketamine and crack, and torturing it just long enough to instill a sense of vengeance before arming it with a sledgehammer and sending it on its merry way to circle back and relentlessly beat us all to fucking death.
This isn’t the kind of enemy you fight with rage. It’s the sort of thing you chuckle at and then sidestep, letting it toss itself, flailing, sledgehammer clattering, down the stairs. It’s just ridiculous.
What you make counts. It always counts. Engaging with that creation, the abstract floaty bit that leaves behind the mark, the node, if you will, is what matters. Everything else is noise.