The Difference Between Thinking and Making...

...is seemingly paradoxical. Or perhaps I am simply thinking about paradoxes because of my next litho project. Except that doesn't seem to make sense because I think about paradoxes all the time.

But as both a thinker and a maker, there appears to be an impossible disconnect between the two, even though they ultimately end up informing one another. The thinking, at least in my case, usually dictates the making. But sometimes the thinking, although intended to inspire me to make, ends up doing the opposite of what I have intended and suddenly the thinking and scheming and planning becomes an obstacle that I must force my way through in order to make anything at all. In a nutshell, this mental block is all very frustrating. Luckily, last weekend, I finally ended up devising a project that I can work with. The making is suddenly possible. And my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to finally, actually, make. 

So after talking to both Sarah Gjertson and Catherine Chauvin and anyone else who would possibly listen this last week, I have a game plan. During the critiques with Sarah, Mia, and Chinn, it was established that the way I look at television, film, and other forms of media is somewhat akin to an anthropologist. So I took that and I ran with it. And I ran as far as humanly possible.

Everything is still manifested in plans and designs at this point, but basically what I have decided to do is visual character studies that pull elements from blueprints, diagramming and mapping, and Leonardo da Vinci's designs for machines and anatomical studies. I have a list of characters that I would ultimately like to design "maps" for, all starting from one basic blueprint-esque design, somewhat inspired by the circular drawings I was doing last week, which somehow relates to characters across different genres.


In case that does not make any sense, here is a visual of what I mean:

The image above is my original cerebral vomit of planning. I approached Sarah and Catherine with this, as well as a whole bunch of plans as to the execution and aesthetics of the final project. Basically, I envisioned a sort of blue printing of characters. I would print a base pattern and either print or draw character silhouettes on top of that pattern, and fill in some of the blank space with personality traits evident through the character's actions as well as the way the character is written, essentially studying these fictionalized people as an anthropologist. 

for example: 

Because the base pattern will remain the same across the work I felt that a printmaking process would be best for this image. I talked a lot to Sarah and Catherine about different ways to print and white line versus black line and bombarded them with all of my plans and schemes. Basically, they agreed that because I have established this pattern and because it seems to reference the work with the writing systems and mapping and blueprinting, I should start with this image, make as many as I can through whatever printmaking process, and work on the character elements later, in whatever way feels appropriate. 

So, my plan for the next few days is to do both screen prints of the base image (because I really want to see if I can get lines that thin and also because photo litho doesn't happen for another week), and to cut the image into a block on the laser etcher, which I can then print using a relief method. This will give me both black line and white line prints that I can experiment with, to figure out the best way to approach the character element. 

It's all still a work in progress but I feel, or at least I hope, that I have gotten over this strange period of thinking and over thinking and that the making will come more easily .