Dread Persephone

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Persephone is the Goddess of Spring. Looks like she is coming.

Like anyone after a winter, I’m really looking forward to doing all outdoors things like walks, bike rides, grilling, etc. This year however, I am a little trepidatious about what else is coming with the Spring. As people start to move into a post-Covid lockdown world, that means saying goodbye to a lot of what I loved about the last year. Working from home, quite, no commute and more gym time.

In all the solitude of the last year I both re-recognized a potentially glaring character flaw, and decided not to beat myself up about it. With the exception of family and friends…. I love being alone. I learned this years ago after spending hours and hours alone on a bike, riding the trails of southern Minnesota. But after moving to Sioux Falls I had to network for the career. I was a board member of this and then of that. Lots of meeting for drinks and luches… blah blah blah. While I met a lot of wonderful people, and found some of the best opportunities of my life, I desperately missed solitude.

After a year of being around far fewer people, my faith in the Lord is stronger (because who else could I talk to), my blood pressure is down, I actually have a deeper appreciation for friends, family, the richness they give life, and my general disposition is just better. I’m sure that if I didn’t have a wife that is genuinely so much fun to be around, I may have a different opinion. Because even after the best days alone, I always look forward to when she gets home from work. But all-in-all, I’m really warming to the thought of embracing the fact that I am at my best when I am not always around people.

The image is drawn from using a stock photo by magikstock as reference.

Watercolor on Moleskine stock. Digital painting touchups. This may be the last time I use watercolor on this substrate though. When I started doing that, I loved the unique look of how the color would react with all the layers of clearkote used to keep the paper relatively safe from warpage. But it is so labor and time intensive to apply and reapply both color and clearkote just to get to the point where an image really starts to be discernable, let alone finished. So I think I am probably done with that process for a long time.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the fresh air, budding plants, and sunlight as much as I will.

Characters From the Ether

There is nothing wild going on with this drawing. I just saw a reference photo by Ita-Its-art and the character just kind of introduced herself. She seems like some sort of authoritarian character out of a near-future, dystopian state. But her motives are pure. She is an Inspector or Detective for some sort of police force. Perhaps her investigation will start with a dead body, but it will end with the uncovering of a far-reaching conspiracy. Or I watch and read too much detective fiction. Either way, I drew Inspector 1331.

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This started as a pencil and ink drawing in a large Moleskine sketchbook. But I ended up coating the hell out of it with a clear coat spray and started adding watercolor layers. Finished up in Photoshop.

Sandboxes 2

As I mentioned in a previous post, Tim and I had a lot of sandboxes, or fictional places filled with character and stories. One idea and set of characters were ever-present though. This was a story I really wanted to make into something someday. I concepted the main character when I was 17. We considered graphic novels, a comic book, a video game or most likely, a sort of graphic novel / website hybrid. We even came really close to starting on it about 6 to 7 years ago. This was something we actually had piles and piles of character sketches, plot outlines, scene write-ups, and historical accuracy notes for. And my friend was a huge help in all of that. But something always held us up.

One problem is the scope of the thing. But more often than not, it was just life stuff. Jobs, job changes, moving, break-ups, bouts of creative block, an ongoing sketch blog we shared, marriage, more moving, etc. It didn’t help that I had an 8 year long addiction to riding bicycles every chance I had.

My wife and I moving into our new place in October, 2018

About four years ago, it really seemed like producing something was becoming a reality. Then I got a call from Tim’s sister telling me that he had collapsed and a body scan found that he had cancer again (he also had it when he was only three years old). Despite that, he still wanted to be a part working on this thing.

Now that my friend has passed away, it seems a little empty to pursue it further despite having poured so much into it. But then I imagine him wanting to slap me upside the head for walking away from it just because he’s gone. Besides, no matter how many times I have tried, I’ve never been able to get those characters to leave me alone. I suppose stories are just how some people make sense of life or the world.

So I’m at a little bit of a crossroads. Delve deeper into this world of characters for good or bad? Or do I follow my new idea of becoming a portrait artist for the fitness crowd? That at least seems like something that could be lucrative. Plus, I do love illustrating fit people in action.

I know… how terrible to have options in life.

Sandboxes

Desert Mystery Woman by Michael Hay based off a sketch by Timothy Keller

The late Tim Keller and I wanted to make a place where we, and some artists we liked could post our art. That was Illustrators Social Club. Now that it is over, I still wanted a place to occasionally post whatever I was working on somewhere besides social media. I wanted something connected to my portfolio site. Hence the new blog. I had a couple posts in line about some artists I wanted to chat about. But then I found a drawing in one of Tim’s sketchbooks that put me in a trance.

Tim’s original sketch

For almost 30 years Tim and I made sandboxes, meaning that as a sort of fictional universe. We had futuristic-noir detectives alongside genetically augmented soldiers caught up in corporate conspiracies. A splintered family at the heart of a world-wide shadow government set during the first Crusades. People rebuilding society after a failed alien invasion left part of the population with superpowers. A western that explored the genre’s tropes. The story of a failing P.I. who lost his family to substance abuse. On and on. They were just fun, creative exercises for us to keep our creativity nimble, and to better understand the process of storytelling.

Tim’s desert woman sketch stuck with me. A woman with a gas mask and sophisticated body armor wearing a desert pith helmet with goggles? What is the story there? Who is she? What has she done and seen? Maybe it was going to be the start of another sandbox? I couldn’t stop trying to recreate, in my own way, one of Tim’s final sketches. One of his final possible sandbox ideas. I knew I couldn’t post about anything else for the first post here.

Is that some weird catharsis? A way to feel as though he’s still with us in some manner? Am I just nostalgic for the times when we would hang out and just draw for hours? After hours of recreating that sketch and then making a final color piece, it did become a catharsis, a way to feel he was still with us, albeit briefly. And yes, I am very nostalgic for the times when Tim and I would just hang out and draw for hours.