So Why Don't We Cut it In Half? (Salvaged blog post from a year ago)

I just found this blog post from a now defunct personal blog. Something I'd written and forgotten about relating to art and relationships. I went back and read it, and thought how appropriate it was for the design process and point of the study of art that I'm now in - it reminded me that there are points in time when I even have the time to sit down and rationally examine things. Hah.

Paul Rodecker has just made me reexamine my life, and he doesn’t even realize it.

My friend Kate and I were having a discussion on relationships and the exacting nature of planning out your life. Her issue stemmed from planning out her future before even making in to the level of having to be that serious and determined about her standing in her relationships. We started talking about how it had become stagnant and predictable and monotonous. Their relationship was enduring, but was is genuinely a relationship worth having?

And then it hit me.

I’ve recently finished a drawing two class with Paul Rodecker, probably one of the most enthusiastic professors at Georgia State that I’ve yet to have (and probably one of the most fulfilling classroom experiences I’ve had) and he consistently was chalk full of cheesy goodness and wit. But among the thorns of corn, there was so much more profound wisdom.

Some of the greatest things I learned from his class was the importance of pushing back something that didn’t work, spending time on something even if you start to hate it, and then, when you do hate it, cut it in half and push it back again until you make something beautiful.

I was thinking about this wisdom as we were talking, and it wasn’t as though this consciously made sense to me at the time we were talking so much as it all fell into place - but a drawing is a multistep experience - so much like the things we encounter in life.

Hardly anything is cut and dry.

You start with furious strokes, the gesture. One hand moving swiftly across a page, sketching out the full experience of the visual representations in front of you. The gesture catches the life and essence. It’s fast and furious and emotional and - well, fantastic.

Then you move to detail. Detail adds significance to a drawing. You can spend hours upon hours upon days upon weeks upon months on detail. Detail can make or break a drawing. The drawing is often in the many intricate details that you stop and see and look deeply into. To appreciate a drawing that took hours upon hours you have to stop and look, and stare, and get close and examine the detail. Detail takes thought and planning.

Then, there’s protection. You’ve spent so much time on a drawing and accumulated so much detail that you can’t help but protect your investment.

But there’s still so much more to add, and you don’t even realize that.

Paul explained all of this - and it never became so clear until I tried to apply that to a relationship.

You start a relationship with emotion. Raw emotion - and excitement. Each step you take is a pen stroke - swift, straight down the page - catching every plausible, conceivable emotion at that moment in that moment. You can’t get enough of the other person and do whatever you can to get as much of that person around you as possible - like a gesture - to get as much information on the page in a short amount of time.

Then you move to romance, and forethought. You’ve attracted the other person and caught them up. And they’ve caught you. The details of the relationship fall into place. What is this person’s view on such-and-such issue? How do they like their eggs? Where is it that they like to be nibbled on the ear? How do our emotions intersect? How can we make this work? How can we make this work even better? How do I tell this person that I love them? These questions beckon like the thousands of concentric circles on a days long sketch. Or the shading of a face that looks so photorealistic, you can’t believe it’s really a drawing - but appreciate it even more when you know it is. The details make the relationship work - they make it worthwhile and prove that there is so much good in the interactions of just two people.

Then you move to complacency. The daily grind sets in. Relationships move slower, there isn’t as much interest in know the other person so much as retaining the information you already know and hoping so much that they don’t change from the person you learned about - the person that you grew to like. You put all of your effort into making a vested interest in protecting your relationship rather than doing your best to make it better and innovate. Like a drawing, you spray fixative all over it, thinking that you’re done - when really, you can’t see the potential that’s lying just around the corner. You grow bored, but want things to stay the same, not realizing the intense damage that you’re doing. Not realizing that things never are the same - they are constantly and forever moving.

So cut it in half.

When we would become too attached to a drawing, Paul would tell us to cut it in half.

And we all looked at him like he was crazy. And then we would do it just to see if he was right.

And we discovered something so profoundly enriching when we would do this, that it became our habit to cut drawings in half, add paper - et al.

We need to cut our relationships in half - we need to cut our lives in half sometimes. The metaphor can be entirely applied to life as a whole (which I later realized as we were talking even further). Life is in the gestures, and the details, and sometimes in the protection.

But sometimes you have to push life back, and cut it in half for the true meaning to come out.

Tighter kerning, some text moved

Finally, Underwater!

Really cool animation for airplane safety

Way to go Virgin Airlines.

We're not keen -

Only the Unexpected

Not what you expected

no wave transparency

better bottom text contrast

Keep in mind, with these it's converting from CMYK to RGB, so the colors aren't nearly as rich as they really are, and the white (as in, on the bottom text) isn't as visible against the washed out web conversion. Looks much better in print...which, is good!

Explore the Unexpected

So much more...

Explorations in Illustration, more work-ups

Print Ad, Rough Work-up, v. 3, no explanation

So, keeping with the whimsical aesthetic I'm trying to create, I decided to go with something more humorous to start. I wanted to play off a classic that everyone would understand, but I also wanted to make it a game of reader intellect (to be fair, I've never read Moby-Dick, but I know the base story, character's names, etc - however, the ad is kind of the "behind the scenes"). I want to do a series involving a Tale of Two Cities, and Jane Eyre, or some other classic. A Capella has a lot of unknowns, but I don't want the message to be lost in obscurity. Even if people have little interest in the classics, hopefully the tinge of humor will make them rethink "book store" and at least get them in the door so they can discover other titles.

Well, that's the idea at least. A new spin on old stories will hopefully at least get them in the door.

The above iteration is rull, rull rough. Rull rough. But, there's a concept.

Print Ad, v. 2, one color water

Print Ad, v. 1

Full House, anyone?

Greetings from twin peaks