“O and 0” (Collaboration w/ Ben Zaehringer) + Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Ben is like an agile tennis player when it comes to collaboration! I think i speak for both of us when i say this was a whirlwind experience. Our idea developed steadily from a misunderstood line in an email, experienced countless frame reorderings, and fell into place after some Shakespearean levels of madness subsided. Some of the (bizarre) excess material we produced will be shared tomorrow.

I had a grand old time rendering the playbill artwork. Sharing a few shots of my progress below.

White charcoal on brown pastel paper. Lots of diagonal anguish-vibes until i found something that felt tragic.

Started drawing with a white-out pen onto the paper, which i regretted because it was nearly impossible to paint over.

Guache. Gouache. Guash? I can never spell that word. Anyway. I started adding that with the help of my assistant.

There we go.

More colors. Mostly gwash. But some acrylic and watercolor. Colored pencils provided interesting texture too.

I hit the extent of my fabric knowledge at a certain point, so my assistant stepped in to help me get real.

And…

…the rest was history. And by that, i mean constantly using the “history” tool on photoshop to undo mistakes. I eventually utilized some layers to change coloring on the stone work in the morgue.

There may be more behind the scenes goodness on Ben’s Patreon!