002
The principal sketch for the piece a freighter from the body of work the last five years
Produced within Fall 2021 | Colored pencil and graphite on smooth Bristol paper | Roughly 9 1/2 inches x 7 3/4 inches
Initially, I conceived a freighter with the idea to include very clinical, didactic text to more severely widen the gap between the words and the figure, which is earnestly revealed by this sketch. An entire text block outlined within a speech bubble reading “…estimated that the total number of wrecks is likely more than 25,000” went entirely unused in the final piece, as well as ‘Fig. 1’ below the figure, ‘(just take your pill it’s easier this way)’, along the figure’s face, ‘but it’ll sell’ in the lower left, and ‘every detail’ in the lower right. What would ultimately be incorporated into the actual work of art underwent a refinement and was more nuanced towards an emotional congruence with the figure rather than acting as a foil—‘Look! You can see the lights’ would become ‘”do you guys see the lights?” and ‘“you should draw some nice freighters…they’d sell around here”’ would become ‘“maybe if you drew some nice freighters people around here might buy that”. There is a more circular composition to the final piece that moves the viewer’s eye around, whereas this sketch retains more of the paper’s squareness, which keeps in line with the didactic approach by creating a slight billboard effect to the overall image. More room is afforded to the boat in this sketch, which was traded to both the figure and the bridge imagery in the final artwork, and creates a more vertical rather than horizontal relationship. This is also true for the chasm below the figure—at the time of the sketch’s creation, I had not yet settled on the exact nature of this space, which would ultimately become far more vertical and dense. It is an example of how pieces in the last five years were often very emotionally directed from one session to the next, and I was regularly trying to return to the work’s emotional core to determine the next most effective choice.
The backside was my space for discovering the effectiveness of layering specific hues over one another in order to develop an effective hierarchy of value for the final piece. Two hues occupy the freighter imagery but a third blue hue was necessary for the figure and surrounding water in order to cement the boat’s prominence. I listed the final hues to the left and included a note for myself so as to ensure I maintained the predetermined layering I finally selected.