Process

In the making of the large format drawing, I hit upon an idea to also make it a conceptual work which involved the unveiling of the entirety of the drawing but one panel at a time with no formal explanation of what was occurring. So each day a mysterious panel of colored shapes began showing up on the instagram feed. I began getting a few responses as I didn’t feel like it was going to hit on many. It did exactly what was needed. 

As time progressed I was getting more and more anxious to release more on the drawings gestalt, so I began releasing more scans of the drawings each day and within a day I believe I may have begun releasing two batches a day. All at planned intervals.

5:55 AM

10:10 AM

5:55 PM

10:10 PM

I found out the hard way how long it would take at releasing 49 individual sheets of this monstrous project so naturally I wanted to make the reveal easier. Thankfully our local Library has a wonderful large bed scanner that really scans the actual colors of the papers, the one I have made the orange look red and really messed with the greens. And of course using it was free. So every few days when I’d get a batch of paper all colored up, I’d head to the library to do some scanning. Took a few times in the directions to fully figure the system out but once that was finished it was as easy as a few buttons to pretend you are pressing on. A few more trips and all the panels had been scanned and a few more hard to find movies were in my cart, I was ready to edit all the scans. After all the decades of using photoshop I am easily used to editing my photos so that part was just a few hours and the entire project had been documented.  Then came the task of taping the whole project together for the photo documentation, I did that laying the whole line of drawings down on the bed and methodically taping each panel together. I only messed up twice in the process. One because I got too overzealous of the fun I was having and proceeded to tape one line in front of another and two more lines after, I looked at the work as I was noticing some irregularities coming from the back of the drawings. So I looked at behold!!! I had taped up one set of line too soon, so I had to get to cutting and retaping yet again. 

After the first three panels were colored in. I was so jazzed I had to take a pic. 

A Little Bit Smaller

After finishing the giant Beyond Identity colored pencils on joined paper, I knew I wanted to create another one just as large but the idea soon ran dry when I realized how long each work would take. Once that idea came I knew there had to be another way so I just figured I’d go smaller. Then the next question is, how small. After tossing around some numbers and physical papers I figured a nine panel sheet would probably be perfect to work with, since they are large enough to grab attention it’s small enough to travel easily. It also allows me to work on two at one moment. Here’s number one from this new series. 

OBJECTIVE JOURNEY 

Colored Pencils on 9 Sheets of Joined Paper

Paper Size 33 X 25.5 Inches

Image Size 29 X 19.5 Inches

Thanks. 

New format of my Artwork

For many years now I have been making drawings of what I would hope to make in large painting format as you have seen many times before. Some in new styles that connect with what you already knew. After six books of drawings I had decided to finally share them, but at that same time I had been attaching them to my painting/viewing wall to get to see them as a group, which I had yet to do. Usually I keep them in their drawing book, but recently had begun drawing on loose card stock which had roughly the same weight as the bound paper I was using. Those drawings had been brightening up my wall with their wonderful colors and shapes. As I was visiting them the idea came to me to try one thing I had dreamed of for many years in my studio which was to tile a painting into multiple pages but be the same size as my biggest paintings that I am creating at the time. So I began attaching rows of paper together to create a large format drawing of a version of one of my large paintings. As I created this paper world, I wanted to make sure it would be not only easy to store but easy to make. Since I would have only one panel to color at a time, I definitely didn’t want to spend all those hours standing up and coloring on a drywall substrate. Hence the beginning. 

Beyond Identity

Colored Pencil on 49 Joined Sheets of 8.5 X 11” Paper. 

Image is 72 X 52”

 

 

Once the initial drawing was completed as you can see in the last picture, the work began its 10 day process of coloring in each panel. I’ve never been involved with a work that was so intense in its making. Usually the wrapping of a painting takes two maybe three days depending on everything going on at the time. One thing this work truly did was light a fire to create even more like this. Which you will see in the new posts. 

Enjoy!