inked to death

I started my second semester of the SVA MFA program pretty well, at least initially. The goal of this semester was to plan and begin the creation of a book. The project could essentially be anything you wanted it to be as long as it was based on the basic theme "Things Important". This normally shouldn't be that complicated but I spent weeks just trying to figure out what I needed to do. I ended with this.

"A book based on relationships and the ways guys communicate involving them. Including but not limited to conversations during drinking, hanging out and playing videogames. Also illustrations of my and my friends experiences and misconceptions of relationships as they went through their teens to becoming adults."

I loved the idea at first, but when it came to actually getting it started I hit a wall. I was inspired by Paul Pope's "Pulp Hope" drawings to create landscapes of skin and sexuality or drawings I otherwise wouldn't do or was afraid of drawing. I created these images.




Sooo... I drew a lot of sexually charged images or just sexual almost softcore/fetish-seque images. They were fun to create but that was it. I wanted to express how many guys saw relationships as just an easy way of experiencing sex and the way porn alters that perception. Just another excuse to ink me some boobs, yah? WELL that may be true to some degree, but my interest in this project waned after this set of images.

I just wanted to draw the pornographic imagery...but ha thats not the type of book I want to create in all honesty. Unfortunately whenever I came back to my initial idea my mind was blank. I put together several failed pencil drawings for potential illustrations but ended up not feeling anything from them in the end. I have plenty of embarrassing situations to illustrate.... so i couldn't see why I lost interest.

Several crits later, with help from Marshall Arisman and Carl Titolo I learned that I was avoiding illustrating or being direct with my illustrations. I was attempting to illustrate relationships while avoiding analyzing my own which has been in a difficult place for some time. So I killed my project and told my class I'd have a new idea soon. So I'm on week 2 since the idea kill and now I'm not sure what to do yet. I picked up my sketchbooks and retreated for awhile. The idea will come to me soon, I'll just draw to stir up the ideas.

Here are some sketchbook pages.