Tuesday, May 12, 2015

The journey of a thousand Robots

"The journey of a thousand Robots begins with a single Sketch."  

Some famous Zen Master said that, I'm sure.  No?  OK, maybe I said that.
Robots have become a big part of my life, and it all kind of started with that one sketch.  Evelyn wanted to sell some of her Geeky corsets and clothes and bags and stuff online and asked me to draw some silly cartoons of things that could say "GEEK!"  One of the first things I drew was the little Robot guy above.
I liked the little guy.  Pretty soon, I was drawing and painting more than I had in years and Robots kept jumping into my images.  Now I have drawn and painted tons of Robots (not a thousand yet, but it is a journey...), and I have taken over the website and the live shows.  It has been a genuine Robot Invasion.  And I am grateful to Evelyn that she has allowed the Invasion to take over LarsenGeekery as much as it has.  She is still making fantastic stuff, by the way.
Now if I can only find a Counting Robot to tally up how many Robots I have actually drawn and painted so far.
-- Jay Larsen,
    LarsenGeekery Labs
Don't forget: May 16, 2015, Bellingham Brick and Toy Fair, Ferndale Events Center, Bellingham, WA
Organised by the same fine folks that bring us the  Bellingham ComiCon  every year, the Brick and Toy Fair focuses on Geeky toys like Lego, Robots and more.  The Larsen's will be there with all the Geeky Goodness.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Motion and Emotion, the Energy in a Painting

I just finished two very different Robot paintings that have some less obvious things in common.  Yes, they both have Robots in them--That's obvious.  No, the less obvious thing is what I am learning about motion within a painting: Motion of the paintbrush, but also the Motion of the Energy and the Motion of the Emotion of the painting.
I have been discovering that my finished paintings feel more coherent and energetic if I can feel and visualize the movement before I start moving the brush.  For the children on the left I visualized dust and dirt slowly drifting down to settle and aggregate, almost creating the building and the characters as if by a slow geological/sedimentary process.   As I applied paint I kept feeling this slow fall and drift of the dust, slowly building up layer after layer until the canyon of buildings and the Robot appeared.  The result is a very deep but static formation.  Even the children, who have more energy than their environment, seem caked in the fall of dust.
After all those rocky grey tones, I needed a splash of color.  So I chose a black and white animal as my subject (ironic, I know!)  But I picked a brighter color triad and started sketching.  When I finished my sketch, I realized I had just drawn two characters sitting on their butts.  Not very dynamic.  So I decided to alter the sketch slightly to make it seem like they had suddenly come to a halt.  Like their obvious forward motion had been checked.  That gave me the idea of actually laying out the characters and my paint motion as a big checkmark: starting at the badger's nose, diagonal down to the bottom, and then up to the top-right of the paper.  Laying my paint in along these lines of motion added more interest and emotional energy to the characters.
I am learning so much as I work through these  paintings and the puzzles they create. When I have a positive image of how the energy will move, the paintings really seem to spring to life in ways that are surprising and interesting even to me.   I hope you enjoy them half as much as I enjoy the process of creating them.  I will be photographing these two additions to the Robot Art series and posting prints in the very near future.
Let me know what you think and keep your eyes open.  Robots are Everywhere!
-- Jay Larsen
    LarsenGeekery Labs