I don’t know why I had not done this before. I have been thinking about my struggles to work bigger and post-Thanksgiving I set up one of my chaotic still lifes yesterday to try to capture all that I am feeling about the constant stream of crumbled buildings and lost lives. For some reason I picked up a small-isn pad measuring 14x17”. I was also focused on trying to draw the crumbled oak leaves accurately and was using a red film to help me see the dark and light areas better. And then it hit me!!!! Joel once had us do an exercise where we just drew 1/4 of a still life on a sheet of paper and then put them all together. In some cases the order of the 1/4’s was mixed up and resulted in better more interesting compositions. We made our drawings in Ink so nothing could be moved or erased. And I loved the result of this exercise. Everyone’s drawings were more interesting than if they had just tried to draw the still life as it was on one sheet of paper. And it dawned on me that this could be a great way to start working bigger and make my work more immersive. And so I have started. Below you can see the process. It still requires a lot of work and I am very unsure of the overall composition of all four sheets. But I am also learning and getting experience in doing this and the outcome is less important right now.
On a separate note I wanted to give a shout out to a TV series that has had an impact on me as an artist. Scavenger’s Reign on HBO max is an unusual animated series for adults. Although not quite as beautiful artistically as a Miyazaki the imagination that went into creating an alien ecosystem blew me away. And made me think about the role of imaginary landscapes in my own art.