Exhibition project is finally finished.

My second and the last update of the art progress on my exhibition piece, it's finally over and now I'm ready to show it in it's 100% complete state. My previous post was all about making the characters themselves, now it's time to show how background was made. Can't say it took the same amount of time and energy as characters but still have to admit that something as simple as what people call "frame" became a one hell of a work in my case and a separate big piece of art.

As you remember, initial digital piece had a flat purple background but I couldn't make it just a plain square with a plain boring frame, an outrageous piece was calling for an outrageous framing. Solution came to me very quickly, I decided to make a TV box shaped frame, classic! It was inspired by the scene from the intro of the Pacific Data Images studio demo, they made a lot of cool TV ads and bumpers in 80-90s using 3D technologies (also made Antz movie), I discovered them in May and was under a big impression from them. First I wanted to make some purely personal designed TV but then decided to give a little tribute to PDI studio and make it a little Easter Egg. Anyway, all these cartoony TV boxes from 80-90s are all the same with just minor differences so it's not a crime to take a ready one instead of inventing the wheel. 

But first, I still had to prepare a basic flat background. I bought a big sheet of PVC plastic and tried to paint it as even as possible. I didn't have a paint roller by hand at that moment even though buying one wasn't a big problem but I decided to try painting it with a a piece of sponge foam instead. It had a similar smooth effect but still a bit uneven and after three layers it still had this marble effect and I was running out of paint and decided to leave it like that, wavy texture is not so bad not to mention a major part of it was going to be covered with characters. Then I varnished it and started to work on the frame. 

As you can see by pictures, I bought a big 5cm thick orange sheet of styrofoam and I didn't want to fuck it up so I prepared a paper version of the frame first to know exact shapes I'm going to cut from the sheet and trust me, cutting a damn 5cm thick sheet of styrofoam PERFECTLY EVEN AND PERPENDICULARLY with STATIONARY KNIFE is hard as hell. I still made some mistakes, parts didn't want to stick together perfectly, I had to sand every each here and there with sand paper to reach a better result which still wasn't flawless, I'm actually surprised it turned out well in the end. And speaking of sanding, the next step was making a smooth rounded shape of the inner part of the frame and faceted shape of the outer frame which meant lots and lots of work with sanding grater and lots and lots of styrofoam dust EVERYWHERE. At least easier than cutting all this shit. When everything was sanded and both frames were stuck together I covered them in 4 layers of wood glue and one layer of yacht varnish to prepare a smooth surface for painting.

Outer frame was painted with iridescent turquoise paint and it didn't have any issues but pink one was pretty tricky. I mixed some pink fluorescent acrylic, some purple fluorescent acrylic, some white and usual pink gloss acrylic and reached a perfect hot pink fuchsia color I applied in two layers, it looks very smooth and even that way. Then I varnished it and next day it all got covered with some ugly light spots! All my friends were trying to calm me saying it looks nice like it was supposed to be like that, the spots are not that super noticeable and it gives the work a vintage feel and I could agree with that but a good artist in my opinion is the one who can control the effects of the material and doesn't allow it to dictate its own rules forcing you to change your initial idea where it was supposed to look different. It can be fine here but what if next time there will be no way for the spots to be there? The worst thing is that I didn't know what caused them. My theory was that I applied the second layer not perfectly (though I was very careful) and left some blank spots where there was just one layer of paint and varnish showed it off by making it more contrasted. So, I bought more fluorescent paint, mixed MUCH more of that perfect pink, painted it all over in THREE perfectly even layers, varnished it again and the next day these damn spots appeared AGAIN. I just gave up here and decided that if people say it looks like these spots are intentional then so be it. I thought that maybe something is wrong with yacht varnish and it reacts with fluorescent paint weirdly (I didn't notice the same effect with usual gloss acrylic). But you know what? With days, I noticed that these light spots started to grow and spread. Maybe my panic was hasty and premature and it's just the way this varnish dries, it's yellow when it's in a can after all, it needs 3-5 days for drying and then it becomes more transparent, so soon it will all become an even lighter shade of pink and brighter. Need to notice, painting everything over can be considered a needless waste but at least it forced me to try another paint. You see two cans of pink paint on one of the photo, regular Decola brand which is all acrylic paints I have and Idea I decided to try, both 50ml but Idea is 30% cheaper and it's much brighter, you can see the difference on the sticks. Decola changes its color greatly when dries, turning from neon pink to some ugly red shit. Idea changes its shade too but still stays extremely bright, at least much brighter than Decola. It's strange how it's still so much cheaper. So I discovered myself a better paint at least and new hot pink I made with it for my frame was even brighter. 

Then it was the stage of sticking everything together and making small parts such as TV's buttons and antenna which is not hard, buttons were made of styrofoam covered with paper like papier-mache, antenna was made of styrofoam and plastic colored with metallic paint, white buttons were made of plastic bottle caps, metal jar lids and circles cut of PVC sheet. And so, voila, the long waited piece was finally done and I finally became free now. I wrapped it in bubble foam, carefully brought it to the gallery and really shocked the curator with what I made, she was at a loss of words and then asked me a lot about how in the world I made it and said it can be called nothing but a leading piece in a pop-art category.

So, what I learned from working with absolutely new technique:

1. Cutting PVC plastic is NOT easy, I will NEVER use it for such small and curvy parts again, only big and straight line things, other stuff needs softer material.
2. Mixing paint trying to perfectly match the color from the screen is a nightmare, next time I'll try to work more intuitively and just mix whatever color I like.
3. Perfect textures like stripes look really good when they're painted on a thin paper, cut and glued on the surface instead of trying to draw them with a brush, I should use it more.
4. Acrylic varnish is bad, it's too liquid, dries fast which doesn't allow it to spread evenly, it dries preserving all the brush strokes. It will take years for me to get myself an air brush so I should either try drying retarder for acrylic paints and varnishes I discovered only when the work was done or find a thicker acrylic varnish like the one with "wet stone" effect which says it dries 3 times longer which means it should be thicker.
5. Yacht varnish proved itself as a good varnish again (I used it for my old sculptural furry works) but just like always it's not perfectly transparent and gives a very slight yellow tint even after complete drying. Also you shouldn't panic if it leaves spots on the painted surface the next day after applying.
6. I shouldn't use bare styrofoam again. Even after being covered with lots of glue and varnish it's still a bit fragile. Nor glue or varnish can make a really solid surfaces, they don't turn into hard plastic, they're more like rubber with certain plasticity and if I try to press this work's frame with my finger I will left an unfixable dent which is not good. Styrofoam is a nice material and you can carve different interesting things out of it but it must be covered with something more solid. 

Honestly, I'm very much tired and want to get back to my regular life of drawing pencil porn again. It was so nice to finally clean the house for the first time in two months, get rid of all the spots of paint, glue and varnish from the floor and make my kitchen look like kitchen again after it being a dirty workroom for a long time. Maybe doing more physical pieces from time to time in future would be fun but not when you have exact dates and deadlines which rush you. This time I had less than two months to do everything and it made me infringe myself upon my porn business in order to get in time. If I weren't that much rushed I could do the work slowly when I actually HAVE some free time between drawings, that's how it should be made.

Speaking of which, I actually got involved into another project but fortunately it's gonna be much easier and shouldn't affect my drawing plans so badly. Looks like curator was so much impressed by my work she decided to invite me to Moscow. She has a separate project coming up in August in a Moscow gallery, its main concept supposes taking popular culture images and depicting them in unusual way, technique or manner. She really loved the technique of one of my very old works which was exhibited in April on expressionism exhibition, I used old soviet wallpaper as a background and made a mosaic image of old cut book covers, and she said I could use this technique but take a separate image, like Volk for example which is of course a perfect choice for me. Consider I got commissioned a big piece of Volk art, well, not exactly commissioned, she is covering all the material expenses but it's already something. If everything goes successful then she will invite me to Moscow to tell about myself and my piece. So I have to give it a try. Book cover mosaics is much easier than what I was doing these months. No time and money consuming shopping to get 50+ kinds of materials, no painful cutting of PVC plastic to make 5 layer sandwiches, no horrible mixing of exact colors, no tedious waiting for the paint or varnish to dry before you can go further, no crazy experiments where you don't know what to expect from what you're doing. It's just me, some glue and book covers I have in great range stored in my friend's house.

Another good thing is that curator decided to exhibit ALL my vintage Volk collection in one of the rooms of the gallery because in her opinion "Integration of the mass culture character into folk art fits the idea of pop-art perfectly" which I didn't expected at all but it's a great honor. Some friends of mine were suggesting me to find a place to exhibit my Volk things, well, now it's coming true! Gonna share furry culture with people for real.

Though it's the last update about making of the piece, there will be the third little post related to this artwork when the exhibition opens and I get the photos of this event.