Art is so high tech.

I am transferring a sketch done on the computer, having printed it out at 3 inches high and 600dpi, which size fits nicely into my bargain basement opaque projector (by which I mean it’s a Jr. McTrace-A-Lot that I got for fifteen bucks.) In order to get it centered properly on my nice 24 x 48 canvas–which took three goddamn tubes of Brilliant Blue-Purple to cover to my satisfaction–I have assembled a jury-rigged concocotion of stands that covers a significant portion of my studio, and which mostly involves stacks of art books and two boxes of nifty Mexican tiles that I bought on a whim and haven’t yet found a use for. Having gotten the entire thing teetering precariously in place, and blocking off the windows with a large piece of Masonite, I got it together enough to get sketch to canvas. Except that because it is a long, narrow canvas, and I do not have a forty-foot long room in which to run the projector, I have to do it in two chunks, the evil moon at the top and his passengers at the bottom. Fine and good. But I have to retain the proportions. So I am running back and forth from my computer and Photoshop, to the studio, ruler flapping at my side, placing guides on the master sketch and multiplying lengths in my head, then back to the studio and the canvas to make little tick marks, while muttering “Earlobes end here, at eighteen inches, head starts here,at twenty-one and one half…bottom of slug is here…”

The contrast between state of the art Photoshop and propped-on-teetering-books amuses me. I hope it’s all worth it in the end.