Wednesday 22 February 2012

'After Work'

'After Work' is a new piece I did last week inspired by the poem of the same name by Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder in Kerouac's 'Dharma Bums'*). It's done in acrylic paint and inks; I was going to do a layered piece similar to Epic Octopus Attack but ended up really liking how restrained it is. I'm going to develop it into a two colour print soon with ink wash.



Unusually for me I actually did two versions - I'm not crazy about over-planning illustrations and tend to take gambles throughout their creation - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The earlier version is below - the fog line-work is a little too heavy, the grass at the front is unnecessarily distracting, the fog coverage isn't enough to make the shack float and the black background doesn't work as well as the white does. Generally speaking if I have to do something twice the second one isn't as good but I think this time I got it right.



* "Japhy and I were kind of outlandish-looking on the campus in our old clothes in fact Japhy was considered an eccentric around the campus, which is the usual thing for campuses and college people to think whenever a real man appears on the scene -- college being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization. 'All these people,' said Japhy, 'they all got white-tiled toilets and take big dirty craps like bears in the mountains, but it's all washed away to convenient supervised sewers and nobody thinks of crap any more or realizes their origin is shit and civet and scum of the sea. They spend all day washing their hands with creamy soaps they secretly wanta eat in the bathroom.'" Taken from 'The Dharma Bums' by Jack Kerouac

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