JEFFJAG'S ART BLOG

#AmazingRealization

It’s done.

I started November 9th 2012, finished March 14th 2014.

That’s 1 year, 4 months, and 5 days.

For the first month, I worked on it almost daily, until I had enough to show so I could pitch a project on kickstarter. The project was successful on January 1st 2013 and work continued on a weekly basis, every friday night, until now. 

About halfway through the creation of this crazy detailed pencil drawing, I started filming time-lapse animations. It was around the time I got my new drawing desk and studio lighting soft boxes from my wife for my birthday. I’ve been posting these videos on my YouTube.com/JeffJag channel and literally HUNDREDS of people are watching them. I’m actually still posting the videos. They’re each 5 minutes long but all produced in 1080p and each video has new motion graphics. I used the videos to keep up practice in After Effects, and I have ended my 3d graphic vacation by playing around with Cinema4D. 

These videos are also the only music I’ve ever created, and each soundtrack was made for each video specifically. I don’t consider myself a musician and made the tracks just to fill the space so I wouldn’t have to record narration for each one. There’s not a lot to say about drawing when it’s at such a small scale. Like, “so, for the next minute, I’m shading some more over here.” And after all, it is a personal art project, so why not just do it myself? So I make soundtracks. I use the iOS apps Animoog, iElectribe, and Figure as well as Soundbooth/Audition to mix. 

The time based aspects of this project have been very fun. Because the whole project is going to be on my tumblr art blog, the entire blog is a form of time-lapse. Because I’m behind on posting, the progress of the blog is time-shifted by a few months. So the posts surrounding this one are actually from video progress 18 and 19, while the drawing was finished in the 25th video.  I will finish posting the progress shots and videos, and this post will stick out of linear web-based “time.” Maybe I won’t post the full story like this again, and the only way you can find out the back story is to read this by scrolling back until you find a huge typed out blog post that you hesitated to just skip over but decided to give it a chance anyway. Maybe I’ll just come find this post and copy/paste it into the present. That’s why I call the time-displaced posts that I create #TimeTravel and also I am into sci-fi. 

The Amazing Realization probably ended up being a creeping fear of death, in the end, but it started out as an adventure. I had been feeling stagnant as an artist and a person and I needed something to put my mind to and something to work hard on. And the paradox of posting progress shots of an artwork is that you have to name it before you even begin… otherwise all your files are named “untitled00324453b” and that’s just no fun. Because I was excited about the project, I wanted to name it something superlative. Something that implied grandiosity and illusion. Amazing Realization.

Every few years I begin these epic projects that end up taking huge amounts of time and push me to think of new things and experiment and try out ideas to the nth degree.  I don’t really even care to know how many hours this thing took. Each drawing session was about 3-4 hours and I’d do between 2-3 drawing sessions per time-lapse video. I started making videos about halfway through the drawing, so a good estimate is 50 videos worth, except there never will be the first 25 “prequels.” You do the math, I’m tired and I’m getting old. Sometimes my finger hurts. Stupid finger.

I don’t know why the bigger projects are always what I gravitate to, but I must have learned somewhere along the way that hard work was important and that taking a long time on something makes it better than something you spend less time on. NO. That’s not true. Time is not relative to quality. The truth is it’s just a fucking detailed pencil drawing. Drawing something this intense on such a large sheet of paper with such a small utensil (0.3mm mechanical drafting pencils), is just going to take brute force. And while it’s not a solid rule, I prefer not to repeat myself too much in a single large-scale work. This was an experimental art project. Though I’d be wrong if I said I did it to create a work of Art, although, that’s really not up to me anyway. I did it because I really love drawing and this project was a way I could do that and once and for all lay to rest the question of whether or not I can draw. NO. That’s not true. It’s not about convincing anyone about anything. I got you again! ha. I find that the feedback I get online is mostly positive, so thank you.  I appreciate every thing you say, even on YouTube. But if I had a bunch of people telling me I was shit, I wouldn’t love drawing any less. I get a number of negative comments about my bee-bop skidoo rap in the Tubes of Wonder video, but it’s also my most liked video. Go figure. So along with just liking to draw and making videos that show me drawing, this conversation between us has been fun. I always make an effort to reply to you, and if you ask honest questions, I like to give honest answers. 

There’s probably more to say about this, but it doesn’t matter. Minus all I’ve said and it’s just a drawing. A very detailed drawing that’s making a trip to California…