personal essays and Gauss
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Gone Batty

In the past week or so I have been concentrating on story-boarding for Gauss, after the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. Being that the book has an anchor in magnetics, specifically the use of magnetics as a source of energy to the inevitable effects of weaponizing the very same technology. I have to say the seed of inspiration for the tech was from this video I came across looking for anything relating to magnetic weapons, the Gauss Gun, its simplicity is deceiving. What I thought was cool about the Gauss Gun is the immense phantom power it employs, one would think it would be more popular in the natural harvesting of energy next to windmills, dams, or solar power, the planet is after all a big ol' magnet reacting to an infinite cosmos of other existing magnets. Although the Gauss Gun wont appear in my book in anyway, it was an integral part in fabricating the atmosphere for all this tommyrot to take place. But plot isn't the problem at the moment, its the illustration itself that im debating at this point.
Its a question of rendering, how much how little and is it really important. My natural intuition is to render my illustrations fully, all detail, from hair to belt buckles to stitching and stains. The thought behind this is to convey the idea in its entirety, in hopes that nothing is lost from the artist initial concept in his head to the execution on paper. The results can be quite beautiful, lets use batman as our base. A good example of this type of illustration is Brian Bolland's work in The Killing Joke..

or Jim Lee's batman

Pretty crisp stuff, cant really deny the clarity in the craft. The intention here is to eliminate the evidence of the artist hand, as much as the artist style is inherently imposed on the illustration its clear the artist isn't trying to remind the reader what materials they are using, or how he felt that day. There is a very machine like quality to the drawings. The artist abilty to draw whatever person place or thing is obvious, and they remind you by drawing EVERYTHING. The garbage in a trash can, a belt loop, or hair on a forearm, as imaginative and thoughtful these artist are, it leaves very little to the imagination of the reader.
On the other side of the spectrum we have artists like Paul Pope.

or Frank Miller

The evidence of the artist hand style is blaring at the reader, the energy and diversity of lines act as a language in themselves, mirroring dialogue, plot, and general mood of the story. There is a real life and warmth to this aesthetic, as apposed to the cold hard renderings by Brian and Jim. Unfortunately to most readers it may seem the artists are sloppy, or maybe don't know how to draw their subjects. But thats all pretty irrelevant. Think if an Old man, and a small girl telling tale of a traumatic accident...the two are held captive in a poorly planned bank robbery. After being rescued by local PD, think how these two would tell their story and the differences not only in perspective, but their ability to express themselves accurately. The little girl would have limited vocabulary, and may exaggerate certain elements of the debacle using the crude, simple, and innocent sensibilities that only a child could. On the other hand, the older gentlemen may remember specific details like the crooks accent or demeanor, how many other hostages there were blah blah, the idea is, the stories would be delivered completely differently, but neither less interesting, they are both important to the whole. While the old man would have recorded hard facts and information, the small girl would only be accounting the abstract raw emotions of the instant. Both are important, I think for me finding some balance between these two approaches is key, I have some styles prepared that I have been experimenting with, but Ill save that for the next post.

Till then heres a wee bit. click

'-_-'*

if any one can tell me what this site is about.

Muscle Appliances

A group of work for grad school applications, these are the last of a batch. I had a chance to show most of my recent work to my old professors Geoff Grogan, Jen Maloney, and David Hornung who I have to meet with next week. Its super to have these three available to talk with about my paintings. Their bodies of work are as contrastive as their feedback, which is great ammo to take back to producing a new painting.

=)