I’ve recently been loving incorporating different dimensions of flow inducing creativity into one process…
Seeing what elements they can all bring, layering and adding to the depth of the piece. Like listening to different forms of music as I draw, seeing how each sound affects the pattern formations. Soft, circular pen dances with Gustavo Santaolla, erratic, dramatic movements with Bach and sharper, triangular shapes with Tokimonsta.
This then developed into another idea as I began to feel the fruits of mixing these different experiences. It was almost as if the patterns were coming alive in front of me with each different type of music, like some kind of animation.
So I decided to create a timelapse, trying to portray the idea of my art coming alive to music
... With each pattern reflecting the feel of that portion of the song.
And now onto the process...
I picked the song before starting the piece and created the mural to fit with the movement of the music. It was all manually done without any digital art software, like they would have made cartoons in the the olden days. So it was a process of drawing a line, walking back to the camera to take a photo and repeating until a pattern was formed and eventually until the piece was finished.
After that, I had almost 2000 photos to gradually put together. I'm sure there's a much faster way of doing it, but each of the photos were individually added to make sure everything fell in time the music the way I wanted it to :)
3 months, 160 hours, 1826 photos and 32 (and a half) pens later...
........... I ended up with 1 minute footage.
Haha. But it ended up being so much fun! And more importantly, so creatively enriching. Isn't that why we do all of this anyway?!
Very nice. Although this brings up lots more questions...
When I see your work, it is rather amazing. So I get the feeling that you have already practiced and defined each section of of the turtle shell in a sketchbook somewhere else. Each section of the shell is so detailed, all sections are very detailed as that is your style, so I am just using a section of the turtle shell as an example. But the details are so fine, it was originally very hard for me to think that you were doing this all on-the-fly. I felt that you already had an idea, you already had some patterns defined, so you just went to work at a larger scale.
However, here in this post, it nearly seems like you are designing all of this on-the-fly because you are discussing what comes out with different music.
Which is pretty amazing. In the video, it looks like you went back and erased once or twice. Perhaps that is just the video but that would lend itself to the on-the-fly theory about your method.
I suppose that if you are doing all of this on-the-fly, then my thoughts go into repetition. For example, I would think that you design one section of the shell on-the-fly, then if you really like it, you will replicate that to the other sections.
This is all just assumption and thoughts running through my head as I look at your work. You don't have to comment if you wish to keep this stuff secret. I will understand.
This turtle I actually drew on a smaller scale around 2 years ago :-) I felt it might have been have hindered the quality of the project trying to create a new piece whilst juggling trying out this new timelapse method. So I went with an older drawing I fancied doing on a larger scale and created it to fit with the song, drawing the parts that reflected that moment in the music... (This wasn't very clear in the post, so thank you for raising the question!) So I always start with the eye, then imagined the little patterns around the eyes emerging to the "tinkles" at the beginning of the song and had the dark netted part kind of "blurt out" as the music descended (wow, it is a lot harder to explain this in words than I thought!) The next step I'm now working on is combining the two and creating something brand new where the whole piece is based on the piece of music :-) It took around 3 months to finish this one, so I'm not sure how long it'll be until the next one's ready! But I've made a start.
There's a timelapse I made in a similar style featuring a new piece I freehanded straight to the wall, so all is possible! I've used the same basic outline for previous elephants, but not the same design :-)
And thank you for taking the time to write out such a thoughtful reply by the way, it's my pleasure to extend the same courtesy back to you. Followed and look forward to keeping in touch in future!
Thank you for sharing, 3 months and 160 hours is quite a bit of work for a one minute video! I appreciate your work even more now
Your kind words are so appreciated :-) Thank you!
Amazing work...
3 words..... UNBELIEVABLE, STUNNING & AMAZING. There is absolutely no doubt about it, you have an amazing gift. Great to see you here on Steemit. A credit to have you here. Stephen
Thank you for the kind comment and share on Twitter, Stephen! It's my pleasure and privilege to be part of the community here... Will be trying to spread the word as much as possible :-)
I just had to share this on twitter. Stephen
I really love your work....the detail, the life in the subject. Have you ever considered doing something more abstract or an alien...I think your style would really lend itself to such a project.
Do I sound like a complete wimp when I say I've veered away from drawing aliens because they give me a bit of a weird, dark vibe? Haha. Maybe I need to man up one day and do one :-) It'd be a lot of fun. Thank you for your comment!
What i like about you is that you really enjoy what you do, and thats the way we should do things :)
Yes! Doing it all from the heart as much as possible... Otherwise the expression can veer off in the wrong direction, for sure... Thank you for your comment, I totally agree :-)
Faye that was amazingly awesome!
Thank you for the continued, kind support! It's really appreciated :-)
amazing work and video, Faye!
very good!
Great timelapse video and bloody amazing art!
This is great, thank you for doing what you do!!!
Very good your post
lo amo!