A vision carved on paper, set free. Just something I had lying around I wanted to show you guys.
I have been working at Thinkwell since the beginning of the year and this is so not what I have been doing. It is a stark contrast from the studio theme park work I have been doing that obviously I can’t show you for contractual reasons, but wish I could. It sucks when you don’t own your work, but I will get inside your heads one way or another.
Some cool stuff for you Monkey Kingdom Simian-heads, I did character design and other work for a theme park in China which was a blast. The theme park was based on the story Journey to the West: Legend of the Monkey King.
It was a dream project to work on the Journey of the West theme park including being able to design the legendary characters. I even got to design some Journey of the West rides which for me creatively was breaking some new ground.
Anyway, I hope you can appreciate the free-flow Simian vision.
“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.” ~ Lord Byron
This is another spacecraft hybridization of the mechanic and the organic and what I call a mechanical organical. The triangular cluster of dots to the left of the craft echoes my own encounter with a genuine UFO. Those three dots used to appear in a lot of my drawings, sort of a signature of mine. I’ll tell you the whole story another time.
The piece was also inspired in part by one of my favorite anime series: Neon Genesis Evangelion. Some of those Angels look almost like spaceships.
I was pretty blatant in establishing the mechanic-organic duality. I tried to use organic shapes on the left of the ship and more mechanic one’s on the right. There are even branches, veins and even leaf-like structures growing out of the left side and trailing arm tentacles like a jelly fish’s ready to stun anything foolish enough to drift in its wake.
One of my process drawings gave off more of a Death Angel Baby than a fully matured Angel of Death.
I continued to experiment and so developed its darker and more sinister Papa.
You might remember the old Passover story about the Angel of Death “passing over” the first born children of the Israelites thanks to the blood of a lamb painted across their doors. I’ll tell you one thing, this one ain’t passing over no one. An indiscriminate executioner!
“I’ve tasted the maggots of the mind of the universe. I was not offended…” ~ Funkadelic
So what is today’s sketch all about? Hmmmmm……. Should I tell them the truth? It’s a Hummingbird. Yup , a hummingbird, tick, maggot brain burrowing through the crevices of hyper-dimensional surfaces in the all mysterious holographic infinity of the multiverse. It’s actually a spaceship: a mechanical organical. This spaceship can and has traversed through the Alpha and Omega…. It’s seen the Yin and the Yang, the bang at the beginning and the crunch at the end, the event at the horizon, Buddha’s fingertips like dark matter monoliths holding up the universe…..the place that tongue can’t tell.
The spaceship has also burrowed trans-dimensionally through each and every pocket and layer of the under and over worlds. Hummmmmed through every spectrum of frequencies, leisurely crossed an Einstein-Rosen bridge and seen that cool spiraling light show in galactic time. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve hopped hyperdemensionally through pockets bounded with surfaces of time. Jay’s SPaceShip travels through what I would like to call the bleed and it has taken notes….and some doodles….
Sci-fi enough for y’ah? Are you entangled in this quantum state? I’m sure you could figure out what I’m talking about if you’re willing to go there……. Anyway, I want to to talk you people out there….. Who is watching Lost?…. Love that show!
What’s the deal? Can we start a discussion on my website? Can we find some cyberpunks, anybody on the web to throw some comments out there? This corner of the cyberspace is waiting already. What the F#@%k?….. What does it all mean?…… Say whatever you want, just comment. Say something cool. Have fun. Say something that’ll inspire me, you, or anybody to draw or paint something…..Talk about whatever you want. Are you ready to jump on this rocket ship?! We’re all going interstellar…… If you’re ready……. it’s time to Be Free Create and Grow Roots. I have a secret plan tentatively called the Community Art Project 1.0. Watch out for details.
Your neighborhood friendly artist Jay Zuckerman signing off till next time and leaving you with one of my favorite songs of all time….. Maggot Brain!
The dark clown is what emerged from broad brush strokes of ink, an ink wash, and a touch of water color which I used to stain the inkwash. I was going for a kind of noir vibe. I love Frank Miller stuff. I don’t think I was even going for a clown initially just some bold dark brush strokes with some intensity, expressiveness, and contrast between light and dark.
The archetypal clown to me is a grotesque exaggeration and is something positively creepy in that we never actually see their faces. The clown hides behind his paint and makes no bones about being an in-your-face distortion. I am also certainly not the first nor the last to consider the irony of the clown whether sad, evil, or in my case dark.
So why did today’s sketch of the day end up a clown at all? How did a study of light and dark with a bold and expressive intention become this?
Honestly, I’m finding myself momentarily lost in thought and feeling like I am all over the place in explaining something simple. Quite actually, I see a sereneness in my dark clown noir that I find peaceful. It is more authentic than ironic and grotesque, and only ironic by piercing through the expectation of irony.
Actor Lon Chaney Sr. once said, “there is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.” He was right of course, but at the moment, I am more interested in whether there is something true.
I am illustrator in the entertainment arts focused on visual development, character design, layouts, concept art, and anything in the realm of visual storytelling. Around these parts though, I'm letting it loose Simian Style and devolving into a higher state of consciousness on the boundary of an infinite-dimensional manifold in quasi-time. There's plenty of room down this rabbit hole! Learn more About Me and check out the Portfolio.
