Insane Imaginings, Random Reveries & Other Creative Cogitation

Ever since I started doing PopCult paintings I have wanted to do something inspired by Andy Warhol.  But I have never been one to just copy something.  The germ of the idea behind Social Networking! came to me as soon as I started doing the Binary Birds, but it did not erupt as a full blown concept until this weekend.

Social Networking! by Jake Beckman. Four brightly-colored canaries socially network form their own squares. The ASCII Binary background reads, "Social Networking!."

Call to action: Buy Social Networking.  Mama needs new canvases. 

I looked over some of Andy Warhol’s work, letting the vibe flow through me, analyzing it in an abstract way. The iconic Andy Warhol image was the Marylin Monroe repetition, therefore I opted to embrace some part of this concept and do a four square Binary Birds painting.  Andy Warhol appears to have loved the color red (so do I), so I decided there would be  a lot of red in the painting. Finally I adopted the outrageous color variation that appeared in those images.  Initially I entertained the notion of repeating my own icon, the canary, in the boxes, but there the my analogy and Andy’s analogy parted ways.

My tweeties represent ordinary people, not famous people who would be recognizable at a glance.  My canaries had to be individuals. I departed from absolute repetition.

From there the concept moved into the sketch phase.  Warning, some quasi-technical stuff ahead.

 Having already completed many Binary Birds paintings with canaries, I just rounded up 4 of my favorite canary sketches, which had been scanned and saved to my computer.  I required an angel-winged flying one of course.  I liked the one where the bird is hanging off a vertical wall.  For whatever reason I like the one I call the “sideways singer,” as it looks like an Egyptian glyph to me.  Finally I settled on a perched canary with a long flowing tail for the fourth bird-I kind of like the idea of having its tail invade the next square.

I moved these into a new Photoshop document and began messing around with the colors. If you have several elements you need to play around with Photoshop is great for that.  Its also superb for color layout as well, which is primarily how I used it in this instance.  At first I thought I would have four solid boxes, but that turned out to be boring.  I recalled Andy Warhol did a repetition with a panda bear toy that had little frames around the image so I tried that.  So the frames are shades of red: Pink, Brick Red and Cadmium Red.  I opted for red, light blue, yellow and light green as the colors for my variations.  The canary in a given square picks up the color of the background in the square counter-clockwise from it, and the eyes, feet and beak pick up the color of the square kitty-corner to it.  I don’t know how Andy Picked is color variations, but the idea of using a pattern appealed to me-I like to create patterns, it is just the way my brain is wired. In my mind all four images are linked in a closed loop with one another via color.

Moving on to the binary…

The phrase “Social Networking” has 17 characters and 17 is a prime number.  There is no way to break it down into anything other than one and seventeen.  I wanted an edge to edge binary pattern in the background.  It occurred to me if I added punctuation I would have 18 characters times 8 bits per ASCII binary character, or 144 characters, which  would form a perfect 12 x12 square of ones and zeros.  Social Networking became Social Networking!

This painting is part of the 100 Paintings thing, but I am dropping 100 Days part as it was no where near a realistic goal.  Today is Day 52 and I have completed 18 paintings.  I accept that life happens and it has been happening to me a lot lately.  At my current rate of production it is going to take at least 300 days to do 100 paintings.  That’s not to say I can’t crank out a painting a day, I just do not seem to have the time to.  Also one thing I did not factor in is all the post production work that has to happen.  This weekend I spent an entire day photographing, resizing, labeling and uploading 7 newly finished works.  This morning I have spend the entire time on just one piece.  This exercise is teaching me a great deal about how much time a single smallish painting really takes-for me it is a minimum of three days: Sketch day, paint day, post-production day.  Of course that does NOT take into account any time spent on marketing the thing.  Thank goodness I quit using oil, I’d never finish anything.

So those are the real life artist thoughts behind Social Networking! If you would like more information about the painting or perhaps would like to buy it, see its page on my website.  Thanks for stopping by. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Experience the Art!

The art work in this blog is federally copyrighted. All reproduction and publishing copyrights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imitated, derived OR otherwise used in any form without the explicit written permission of the artist.

I love creating.  I have to create.  If I could find a way to continuously paint or whatever and keep a roof over my head, food in my belly and keep myself in art supplies, I would.   I am still working on that.  A lot of my previous writings have been about the business side of what I am trying to do, but I really would like to write more about the creative process.

I have stuff that wants to get out.  It has to be expressed.  I have a need to do this thing.  It is very frustrating not to be able to do it and I have been frustrated a very long time.  I was a good student, but I was always doodling in class.  I don’t doodle much anymore as my creative time is very limited these days.  I think I would like to doodle again.

The Random Reverie part of the blog is for people who have the same need as me, the need to create.  It’s a very special brand of insanity.   I have to be insane to want to keep doing something like this after having my pegs knocked out from under me again and again.

These days when I decide to art, I art; I don’t want to lose the spirit of the thing before it gets done.  I have to focus intensely as my time is limited.  Just like many of you I also have to keep doing the stuff that keeps the roof over my head, the lights on, food in my belly, food in my critters’ bellies etc. The way I accomplish my goal is through my process.

I usually do some preparations before I paint as I generally need to know where my painting is going before I lay brush to canvas, but I do not spend so much time preparing that I don’t get to the canvas.  Recently I built a skeleton of a dragon out of pipe cleaners so I could figure out how the dragon would work. I did several sketches then loaded the result into PhotoShop to do my layout and fool with the colors.  I’ve created transparent overlays so I can see how the layout is interacting with the Golden Mean and the theoretical ideal locations of focal point.  A lot of times it is spot on, but sometimes I break the rules.  Once I start painting it usually goes pretty fast.  That is my process, but it may not be yours.  I know several other artist’s whose technique for getting it done is the complete opposite of mine; maybe they flip on their favorite tunes, spend some time selecting their pallet then let the brush and the paint on the canvas tell them where they are going, let the history develop real-time.  (Sometimes I do it that way too.) The point: You have to have a process for getting it done, a creative work ethic if you will.  I can’t tell you what that process will be as you need to figure it out for yourself.  If you do not have the will to finish what you start, if you do not have a process that leads to completed work, then you probably will not get it done.  Your process may change over time. Your process may vary.  The goal is to get it done, get it out, complete the thought of the moment and set if free.

Focus serves another purpose as well.  When you are concentrating on your art, you are not indifferent, you are setting your creative animal free.  It doesn’t matter what you produce, it matters that you care about what you synthesize.  Some artists do pure abstracts while others do photo-realistic still-life, some artists paint portraits while others paint big-eyed charactures, some artists paint cityscapes while others do pastoral scenes, some artists paint animals while others paint flowers, some artist don’t paint at all, they do cartoons, sculpture, jewelry, quilts.  No matter what the result, there will be those who like it. But there will be  those who can’t stand it; they are not your concern.  Your concern conveying your passion to your audience.  If you don’t enjoy it, if it is just a job, I think it will show.  If you do not feel enthusiastic about what you are doing, I think that the connoisseurs of your subject matter will be able to tell.  Art must come from the heart.

PS.  As you create, you may be tempted to go fool with something that you previously completed.  I would say, “Don’t do that!”  The completed thing is a completed thought at that moment.  If you want to change something, start a brand new thought.  Before you know it you may have a series.  You can learn a lot about your process while you explore variations on a theme.  One thing that I have discovered over time is that the painting I like in a series, the one that I think most completely expresses my thought of the moment, is very seldom the one that is the most popular with my patrons.  Imagine if I had painted it over  in an attempt to perfect my thought instead of letting it be; I would never find that my collectors had different ideas.

Yours in art – Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Experience the Art!