It’s Saturday. I’m sitting at my favorite coffee shop and hanging out with one of my really good friends. It is a bit overcast and chill outside. This is the kind of day that I find absolutely perfect. Normally my face would be absolutely rooted in a sketchbook and I would have my brain completely jazzed. My synapses generally fire at a million miles an hour, but today has been a little different. I got a call from a very good friend who is having a rough time of it. It makes me terribly sad. I was nearly in tears coming back into the coffee shop, where I was immediately accosted by another acquaintance who was upset about not a heck of a lot, but upset nevertheless.
It’s strange to think about how much these things affect your creative process, but they truly do. In a few moments I will begin sketching in my book again and although I will not be drawing any of these moments out verbatim it comes across as tension and release in drawings. Characters generally ease the message. Power lines and pipes say nothing while they say everything. I haven’t entirely figured out how to say everything that I want to say without letting on to the audience, but it is a goal to approach, nevertheless.
Here is my most recent power line piece. Just as an exercise I am going to tell you about the emotion behind it. I hope that that in no way ruins the piece for anyone, but I am feeling particularly open today. The hard times are not an individual thing. We all experience it. Only through solidarity can we hope to do anything about our positions in life. We must be supportive of one another.
Consider for a second the subjects of this piece. The left and right segments of this piece are a warm orange with a very chaotic experience to the left and two large moments of opposing interaction to the right. The cooler green in the center serves as that moment of ease in tension. The cross hatching is more at ease. It is a spot to relax, or as it were, the spot at the center of everything where life is simpler. That is what I was thinking about while making this piece, though I don’t think that that was obvious from the imagery. Also, the closer we look at things the more complex they feel, the more opposition is evident. As we look at something from farther away there is more abstraction. The situation seems clearer and easier to comprehend.
Now it is time for me to draw in my sketchbook. I’ve worked out through words what would have been my first two awful drawings. My acquaintance may already be a winner. He just needs to open his eyes a bit more.
Peace
-Mike