Thursday, August 25, 2016

Me, Myself, and Eye


Ummm... What's with the eye, you ask? Well, let me tell you about it. On September 29, 2014, I had already made the conscious decision to begin a month long artistic journey... WHICH ultimately turned into a 13 month path of insanity called the "13 Months of Horror". My job at the time was phone based which allowed me to be able to sketch while I was talking, a favorable position which allowed me to create a new piece of artwork daily. I decided that I needed a self portrait that would accurately reflect the art that I was about to release to my friends and family on Facebook. The funny thing about this is that there really was no conscious thought before hand as to what I wanted it to look like.

I first sketched out a detailed version of my face, then removed the detail and stylized the design. I wanted something that would be slightly creepy and reflect me as an artist. I had originally thought of presenting myself as Frankenstein or some other creature of the night but that idea didn't seem very original not to mention the fact that in my minimalistic style, my face might end up being unrecognizable. Then it hit me, I literally saw the finished design in my mind's eye and that's what the design became... a reflection of an artist who only sees through his mind's eye. I decided to re-create myself as a zombie because zombies are driven by their desire to consume just as I'm driven by my desire to create. I thought adding the metal circle and allowing a portion of my brain to be exposed as well would give it the "creep factor" that it needed and reveal my mind's eye.

After I got home from work, I scanned the design, took it into Adobe Illustrator, and completed it using the pen tool. The colors were initially unintentional, except for the green eyes. I had already decided to use bold, saturated colors in my earlier minimalistic pieces so I stayed with the same mindset. I was also planning on using the design for screen printed t-shirts so I also tried to keep my color choices to a minimum. Even though we refer to our brains as "gray matter", oddly enough our brains are quite pink so I chose a salmon color for the brain and decided to carry it across to the background, allowing the bright green of the primary eyes and the white of the third eye to control how a viewer might see the portrait. So that's it in a nutshell, it wasn't preconceived... I was just being guided by my artistic eye. Is this what I really look like, you ask? Yes, but only when I'm sleeping.

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