Black and white, thick lines, thin lines. Carving up space again and again. People, buildings, trees, underwater, abstract.  Milk pens, ballpoint pens, sharpies, markers, microns. On the couch, at work, on the bus, in a car. Any time, any place, any day, all day, everyday. Lines this way and that way and up ways and downways.

No rulers.

Fun-A-Day 2012 is almost here!

Adam Mansbach, author of the “children’s book for adults,” Go the F**k to Sleep.

Thanks to Scott for the inspiration.

After drawing 21 mazes for the past month, I feel as if there is nothing else to draw. That’s hogwash, of course. There’s plenty to draw, more to come. The drive to make marks on paper with random instruments never goes away. But still…

A Maze is one of the most basic visual narratives possible. You are literally drawing the narrative thread running through the picture, asking the viewer to follow it to it’s completion. Throw in various gimmicks like false threads and paths that loop back on themselves, sure, but ultimately the right path will emerge.

My favorite kind of maze to draw are the types seen below.

They look so organic, and drawing them just feels so good. Random marks, slashes, lines twisting and contorting all over the place. No attempts to create the illusion of trees, birds, naked models. Just lines and shapes. Wrapping around each other sometimes looking like fingerprints. It’s so freeing to be able to scale a picture down to the most basic narrative, just “find the path that goes completely from one side to the other”.  A story is created as it is drawn, plot decisions like “there should be a fork in the road here.” Little subplots develop, tangent into their own space, eventually feeding back into the main narrative.  This feels like visual storytelling at its purest.

I spent 6 hours drawing the above maze. It’s dimensions are roughly 5 feet by 3 feet. I drew this, spread out on the floor, going straight at it with a marker, killing 3 sharpies to finish it. After hanging it up and looking at it, I felt a sense of peace.

It is the best thing I have ever drawn.

I have drawn more complicated things, thing’s of larger scope and importance, but after looking at this maze, I felt “What else is there?” I know this is just a plateau, there is much more mountain to climb. This milestone will be a distant memory soon, as closer examination will reveal cracks in the foundation. The temptation to add more ink to it will arise. The drive to create bigger and better things will propel me forward, and soon something else will be the best. All that is expected, unavoidable, actually.

But for the first time in a long, long time, while I was looking at this giant maze I drew, I felt that I could just dissolve into thin air, knowing that everything is perfect.

Another successful Fun-A-Day project in the books!

Maze-A-Day has been an interesting project. It feels very good to get lost in drawing them, free of the constraints of drawing something that somehow exists in the real world, like a horse of something. It is also an exercise in concentration, as I draw these straight on with a pen, no planning beforehand. That has come back to bite me numerous times. Drawing black and white parallel lines with multiple pathways can be dizzying, and I occasionally get lost and connect the wrong lines, messing up the maze. There has been quite a bit of post production Photoshop cleaning up going on here because of this, contributing to the sparse postings.

We forge ahead, though. At this point Maze-A-Day will consist of 20 mazes like the ones above, and one large one, which will be on display at the Fun-A-Day show. The smaller ones will be displayed somehow, not sure in what form yet though…

The inspiration for Maze-A-Day comes from my continued proclivity of “cutting” up an image with many lines. The abstract shapes that come from this are very interesting, almost dizzying. There is also the metaphor for life itself, a winding maze which we all find ourselves navigating. I’m a firm believer in the idea that it’s all about the journey, and I think these mazes reflect that.

More to come…