Last summer was the first time we’ve been dip-netting in almost 11 years. So we’ve been eating our haul of salmon almost once a week this winter, which is probably a net positive for our health. We’re already making plans to go again in the summer, but I couldn’t help but think, at least for a moment, what if the fish ate people?
One day I was in the bathroom, washing my hands and with a quick glance down at the sink, I realized that the spacing on the cold and hot water faucet handles appeared to be about the same as one’s eyes. And at that moment I began imagining myself wearing the faucet on my head, almost like a pair of goggles. And I began to think about the symbolism of the water creating a feedback loop from the brain to the eyes and back into the mouth. Maybe I’m drowning in my own thoughts? I don’t know. I will leave that up for interpretation.
I got out my phone and took an awkward bathroom selfie, trying to keep the perspective like that of the handles from the angle that I had taken the other photo. I brought the two images into photoshop and began outlining them with a sketch. In reality, the spigot was a bit shorter, so I decided to elongate it so that it lined up better with my open mouth.
I decided on a vertical composition, slightly off center, focused on the bottom third of the frame. I felt like I needed some leading lines or something interesting going on in the background. Later I looked down at one of our African Violets and noticed how all the stems radiate out from the middle and I realized that this effect would be accentuated if I took a photo with a wide angle lens on my phone and that it would make an interesting background – to focus the attention towards my open mouth, which could be flooded with water at any minute.
They say that art should make you feel something. When I showed this to my wife, she asked if I was ok, which tells me that she felt concerned and maybe a little confused. Would a normal person paint themselves with a faucet on their face? How does it make you feel? Is it cliché or is it a little weird? Let me know in the comments.
I had a weird dream last night so I sketched it in pencil first, scanned it into Microsoft Paint and then added lines and colors, exporting the progress frame by frame into the animation above.
The whole process didn’t take too long – in the morning I sketched while drinking my morning coffee and later on I spent about an hour and a half doing the animation.
It’s kind of fun to do these!
We were at the beach earlier this fall at Pt. Woronzof in Anchorage and came across a rather thick cable sticking out of the water.
Here we see a thick braided copper cable with a flexible polymer insulation layer and an outer jacket. My guess is that this cable carried power over to Fire Island at one point in time.
Then kids started throwing rocks at the piece of cable sticking out of the water and I managed to capture one splash right at the base of the thing… and I imagined it like a worm coming out of the water… because I really like Dune.
This inspired the following conceptual illustration that started out as a picture of my kid sitting on a rock.
I decided to draw my kid on top of the severed cable instead and I thought that looked cool.
Below is a short animation of my coloring process.