Clouds

 I have been working on "cleaning" the "Gondolas" picture for several days now. I believe I have posted the "pre-cleaning" version of that image here before.  The process is designed to ready that hand-drawn image, which is 10x32, for printing on canvas at about 20x48. Anyhow, "cleaning" entails taking the original into Staples and creating a digital version on their large format scanner. Then I pull that digital version into Photoshop and remove all the little tiny imperfections - blobs of color from the markers - so everything is "perfect." I know, I know a little OCD, but what can you do?  This entails zooming in until I am working at the 2 - 3 pixel level.  If I wasn't a bit crazed before, I found myself in need of a break.

Fortunately there is a good therapy for this. I call it "cloud creation," because it harkens back to something we all did as children. You lie on your back on the ground and look up at the clouds and see what figures you can see. Charles Schultz did a wonderful cartoon on the subject. Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy are gazing up at the clouds and Charlie asks what the others are seeing.  Linus responds with "Well, those clouds over there look like a map of British Honduras in the Caribbean. That cloud over there looks like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculpture . .  .  etc." To which Charlie responds, "Well, I was going to say a saw a ducky and a horsey, but I've changed my mind." 

Cloud creation is sort of like that.  You take a large sheet of drawing paper, I used 14x17 for this example.  You put on some music that you like, take a black marker, and let the marker go wherever it likes. I used a few different kinds on the example because I like having lines of differing widths. Then when you feel like the doodle is done, or the music stops, you take a variety of other colored markers and fill in the spaces your marker created. You may have noticed I did not say "you have created." It is an important difference. Remember cloud creation is an antidote to the pixel level exactitude of "image cleaning."  Cloud creation is sort of like a Ouija board with markers. You just let it happen - no plan, no design, no intention. Just flow. And this is what came out.

Cheers!