Also, some things I have to focus on in studio. I think I should work digitally for my cartooning work as far as inking and coloring goes, because it’s so much faster and intended for reproduction anyways. I think I’ll be spending much more time on the ipad in procreate. I’ve been playing with it over the break and it’s been going well so far. Otherwise, I get lost in the transfers and scale-ups and redraws and tracings of traditional cartooning and lose momentum and motivation. Digital means I can keep the freshness of the thumbnail, and its proportions. It’s time to stop being ignorant to this fact- what’s important to me about the work is not the product but rather the image. I’m most used to the image. The product is secondary in the age of mEchanical reproduction . . . Walter Benjamin.
Another thing, I should learn how to get great captures, and to edit well photographs of my studio compositions. Again, it’s the image that’s important and my metabolism is much too fast to hunker down to paint every still life I find inspiring. Rather than beat myself up over how slowly I paint and constipated I get in my stream of ideas in relation to time (there’s not enough time blah blah), it would serve me better I think to flik it and be over it and edit in post.
Another other thing, I should be sensitive to when something needs to be a big deal, and when a simpler image will do. I’m thinking of my ‘studio block’ cartoon page, which hit it spot on in a stream of consciousness tour de force versus the couch painting, or other projects that I scaled up or took too seriously. What did I need from them and why were they a wash? Most things can be said simply, (my ideas at least). Small is fine. As is going over the original sketch. As is using pencils as inks, fuck it, that’s what you’ve trained in.
