This Twilight Garden (2015)
And slow the moon swims up
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I think this might have been my first contribution to the online gallery Every Day Original. There were no guidelines besides, “Make it good.” I mostly did personal works to show there, small drawings and paintings that could scratch the itch for non-illustration work.
For the first and a few subsequent entries, I decided to reach to music, which has been an occasional place I go for inspiration when illustrating other projects. It isn’t a realm I’d mined much for illustrative purposes on its own. The great thing about illustrating music (especially non-commissioned) is that it has enough abstraction in it, typically, to allow me to approach it and experience it in a slightly subconscious way. It’s different than illustrating stories, which I also enjoy, which requires a bit more in the way of comprehension and representation whether narrative or metaphorical. With music, it’s much more...I don’t know, I feel as if it puts me in the place where dreams come from--at least certain music, and specifically when I’m listening intently, as I did while having this track on repeat for a long time while sketching and working.
For this piece I picked a favorite track of mine, “This Twilight Garden,” by The Cure. It was a b-side track so isn’t perhaps as widely known, but for 30+ years now (!) has been a song I can return to any time and bliss out. There are a few songs that seem to have tapped right into a part of your soul, allowing it to manifest outside of you. Maybe you know what I mean. This is one such for me. It’s like having a part of your emotional state reflected back at you. Amazing that music can do such a thing from time to time.
One thing I loved about this series of works produced for EDO was the rather spontaneous nature of them. Illustrations are often meticulously planned so that the final execution leaves little to nothing to chance, because the stakes are much higher. On some occasions I wouldn’t even do thumbnails.