Pandemic Studio

For the past 18 months I have been getting up each morning and immediately stepping over these storage crates to work in the studio. I start the morning by sharing the post of the day on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I then look up the daily hospital rates and United States risk assessment map which I put on the sidebar of the days article.

As I eat breakfast, I browse through he days news looking for the latest horror that needs to be illustrated. Some mornings I wake up with the idea fresh in my head. Some of the best and strangest ideas occur to me as I am trying to wake up.

With the idea in mind I start researching on Google images. This part of the process is quite fun as I get lost down various rabbit holes and the idea may morph as my research leads down strange tangents.

An older version of Photoshop is used to cobble together my ideas and then I e-mail that composite to myself  so I can use it as reference for the painting which is done in Procreate on an iPad. My goal is usually to get the drawing done by lunch and then have the painting done with enough time to write an article by midnight. Some days, like today,, I post work that is unrelated to the pandemic so I can have a few moments of peace were I am not analyzing the situation our country is still in. Social isolation for an artist isn’t that bad if the world is in a tail spin, and you feel the need to document every moment of the free fall. I am also thankful to be with a partner who has made the pandemic incredibly bearable. Laughter and time spent together in our bubble make the time fly by.

The pandemic is far from over, but moments of peace and quiet are as important as the endless insanity.