| A lot of people ask me, "What is your process? How do you create your work?" Well, in this blog entry, I'll try and explain the method to my madness...
The following is going to be more about the technical aspects. For more on the inspiration and influences, please view the finished piece in my gallery.
With this piece, I started off by taking a picture of this ceramic Cheshire cat which lives in my studio I like to work really small, and it helps me to have small photos to work from.
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| I got the idea to create a photo-blog for "The Joker" after I had already done the basic sketches and layout, so this first scan is a little further along than I would like, but next time I hope to include more of the beginning stages.
This drawing is about 11" tall and done on smooth Bristol drawing paper. In all of my work I start with the black ink to get the outlines. I use mostly Micron and Zig, 03-005 pens (really small). So here we have the first scan after about 10 hours of drawing.
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With my work, I basically draw an outline of each section. Some are more recognizable than others like the cat's face, the goldfish, and the fish bowl. Then I break down each section further and draw different patterns and images to fill them out. Like in each of the stripes on the cats body and tail.
When I come up with patterns, I usually find things that will help the development of the theme. Like in this piece the playing card imagery..the spades, clovers, royal card faces, the little castle, etc...
I sort of squeeze them in wherever they will fit, like the King, Queen and Jack faces...I'll let you guess who the Joker is...
Once every tiny section has been developed and filled in, I stop with the black ink and start thinking about color. This was about another 6 hours to get to this point.
At this stage, I would include the image in my coloring book...This piece did not make the first printing ...guess we'll have to wait for the second edition!
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| Then comes the fun part...the coloring. Not that the black is not fun, it's just so rewarding to bring color into each tiny section that took me so many hours to come up with. I have always been really into coloring books. It just feels great to watch the image come alive...
Most of the time, I will have a color scheme in my head before I start. With this piece, I wanted to go with a lot of purples and blues.
The color is generally a lot faster than the black ink. At least, the actual drawing is faster...There is a lot of thinking about each color that does take a while. I often find myself "over-thinking" some sections and not actually doing anything. Finally I'll just say..."Ok ok, just pick one already!" It doesn't really matter if the cat's whiskers are true blue, or light blue, or Copenhagen blue...just blue will do...move on.
The color to this point took about 2 hours...
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| With my color schemes, I usually find a balance between two or three major color groups. And I often use colors with high contrast, like orange against blue, or yellow against purple. I guess I did learn something in color theory class...even though I hated it at the time...why do we have to draw these stupid color wheels again?
In-between the purple and blue sections I wanted to bring in some greens and aquamarines to give the cat a sort of soothing vibe. And of course, yellow, which is pretty much my favorite color against black, and used heavily in all my work.
So here is the finished color version of the Cheshire Cat and the Goldfish. About another 4 hours to finish the color. So we're at 22 hours so far...
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| Then comes the background. When I originally laid out the Cat and Goldfish bowl, I didn't relay leave enough room on the paper for the background I wanted to do, so I started this drawing on another piece of paper, so I could combine the two later.
I was going for a fairy-tale-castle type vibe with this. I knew I wanted to do the checker floor. When I lived in Hollywood, we had a checker floor in the kitchen and I always knew it would come through in a drawing some day. It's just so dramatic, and demands attention. Plus James Christensen uses the checker pattern a lot, and I have been influenced by his work a lot lately. These two pieces In particular...
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| For the color of the background, I wanted to create a clash between the old, classic, royal colors in the arches, and the red and white barber poles. It makes the scene very psychedelic for me. The perfect setting for the Cheshire Cat.
Something I really like about working digitally, is that when you don't like something, it's pretty easy to change things. I work with a lot of layers in Photoshop and every-time I change something, I make a new layer so I can quickly return to the original if things go south. For instance, I didn't really like the pole on the left in my original drawing, so I just copied the one from the right and pasted it in place. I think it has a better balance this way.
The background image with back and color took around 8 hours.
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| I knew I was going to have to find something really awesome for the background behind the background drawing. I was originally going to use just straight black, but it looked a little too sinister. I wanted to brighten things up, so I decided to use this picture I took of these amazing clouds. I like to combine my drawing and photography in certain places. Sometimes it can be the perfect fit.
I think these clouds are great for this piece because, for one, the color was just perfect. I think it helps bring out the blues in the Cat and goldfish bowl without overpowering them. They are also very figurative which adds to the psychedelic, dream-like atmosphere of the piece.
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| So when I brought them all together, I think it found a really cool balance. I wanted most of the attention to be on the cat, but also the goldfish, which are both slightly off center and framed by the bold barber-pole columns. And the checkered floor tends to lead your eyes up to the center and then into the clouds in the background.
It all seems to come full circle and ends up being a really fun image to look at for me.
With all of the drawing and Photoshop work combined, this piece took about 35 hours.
I hope this has given you some insight to how I create my work. If you have any questions or comments, I would be happy to answer them. Thanks for reading.
To view this piece and find more information about ordering prints, please visit my gallery.
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