"READ" Geo Melee behind the scenes

 

(Listening to Panda Bear's Tomboy in the background + drinking a glass of Wrongo Dongo Monastrell wine).

  I wanted to share a behind the scenes look into how I approach the geo melee work.  I used this piece that spells out "READ" as an example.  I started out tracing a border with a ruler then lightly traced each letter.  Afterwards, I randomly added simple geometry to follow the letter paths I made.  There are squares, circles, rectangles, arrows, triangles, semi-circles, parallelograms, and trapezoids with a rare appearance of ad-hoc geometries I used to fill in non-symmetrical empty spots.

  The 'A' wasn't as wide when I originally traced this, so I compensated and measured how much space I had to make the 'D'.  I had the room, but I couldn't make the 'D' any wider or I'd be out of the border.

  Once the shapes were outlined with a pencil, I followed up with a thin point sharpie.  This is my 4th time outlining tiny geometries with a sharpie and I felt pretty confident.

 I specifically chose the word 'read', because it's back to school season.  People are school shopping and I wanted to  make a piece to reflect the learning vibe many kids will experience.  I personally am a temperamental reader.  I can get through blogs fine, and short stories, but I have a horrible attention span for long novels.

  This is the fun part where I do a marker round robin.  I began coloring in the 'R' in 1 geometry for each letter and follow with the other colors.  I soon realized I had used too much brown, I bumped it out of the rotation.  To speed things up, I colored 3 shapes at a time.  When the majority of shapes were filled, I gazed at the gestalt and figure out what is the best color based on the neighboring colors.

  I go through and fill in the geometries I missed, erase the pencil lines, and fill in the border.  My wife suggested I try doing a green border and like a good husband I listened. ; p

There are additional things on the computer I could do, but it is complete and shows the process for how I've approached slamming random colored geometry together or what I call a Geo Melee.

Geo Melee

I'm working on my portfolio and trying to get about 200 pieces represented. I've primarily done the first part with photography, but lately I've taken a try at illustrating the next set of works. These pieces will come from a love for simple geometry I've had since I was in high school, and the first few pieces reminds me of a satellite map of Manhattan, NY.

I remember watching a Hitchcock episode with my wife where Salvador Dali and Hitchcock teamed up. What a weird combination! The most prominent memory I have from that episode was a table with eyes printed all over held up by feminine legs. Salvador Dali has always fascinated me with his spooky poses, but his work drove me to try drawing eyes myself. The third piece with a blue border takes the geometric melee and adds the eye of an observer. The colors are picked based on a neon trend I've seen lately and I left the eye in pencil to be a quiet rebellion to this trend. Both the eye and geometry oppose each other and yet they join forces to polarize the illustration. These 3 illustrations templates are available on etsy. I say templates because I will make a few variations of the piece and you can choose one that resonates with you. This keeps each piece unique and allows for the best match between you and the geometric melees that will ensue.