These things we Are…
These things we are... These things we bounce between
Like good and bad, like home and hell. That current in our bones.
Between them, we lay floating. The steel trap's always near.
And while we float, we watch the fight but do not dare to bet.
We're always too damn busy and we're always too damn scared.
We think that things just happen. Hey, no one has control!
So we let go of the important part: remember? it's *our* play.
And here's the thing: we're all of it.
The hole, the void, the hunger,
the head, the heart, the loins,
the knife and the dead weight, and even the damn trap.
We're talent and producer. We're sound and music sheet.
The rhythm in the writing.
(Even when it's broken and there's no rhythm, no rhyme,
and nothing seems to mean a thing anymore. Banana.)
But among all the chaos, the song is always there.
And all along the steps, there's always the Red Thread.
The thing that binds and lifts us, the saviour and the noose.
So follow it and tug it and hold it in your teeth.
The important part is not what is, but where we go with it.
And yeah, we're just dumb matter, and we are afraid and cold.
But we also have the spark, the mind, the soul, the wings.
So we may be in the gutter.
But we will be the sun.
The what and the why
In a way, this piece closes the Tiger Trilogy. There are still stories to tell and truths to remember through these characters, and I might revisit them soon, but these three prints tell a story by themselves, and there's a common thread (red and otherwise) running through them.
As much as "These things we chase..." and "These things we fear..." tell different sides of that story I mention -sides that are seemingly at odds- this one straddles the line and lives in the space between the extremes. Because what's important is not what pulls us or scares us. What's important is that we find a place and a way to live between those two poles. There's always gonna be tempting prey made of light, full of ties, beckoning us. And there will always be dark pits of despair with a concealed blade warning us.
And there will always be us, finding our way towards, walking our path between, and living our lives for and despite those things. There's an unbreakable thread joining us and our fears and our goals and our desires. Our hearts and our minds. As always, there's a path if we only walk it.
Now, I went pretty on the nose with the imagery in this piece, but I didn't want anything to be hidden or mysterious. The Tiger floats, unbound to the ground, one false movement away from the trap, that thing made of metal that'll maim him. It just takes a false movement to be grounded forever.
Above, the object of the Tiger's yearning, the eternal balance, the cycle and dance of fear and desire, of empty and full, of hell and home. Again, I was not trying to be subtle with the Yin-Yang birds. It was a beautiful image and a good way to reiterate the relationship and balance between the ideas in the first two prints. And hey, the eyes worked perfectly as the dots in the traditional Yin-Yang depiction. I kinda had to do it.
And the Red Thread bounds it all: Trap, Birds, and Tiger (loins, heart, and head) in the eternal moment we see in the piece. What will happen? Which way will things go?
I'm afraid I have no answer if there's even one to be had. Each of these three pieces presents a moment, but their outcome, the next frame, is not for me to say. It's for you to decide and your Tiger to live.
So go forth and do Tiger stuff.
The how
The idea of "In between" was really important to me here, so I wanted to make sure it was well represented in the final image. I knew I wanted a floating Tiger since the two first pieces had it firmly anchored to the ground, and I knew I wanted the two birds from "These things we chase..." and "These things we fear..." in there somehow. From there, I started sketching:
Noodling and sketching
Look at that guy-in-a-costume Tiger...😁. (Tap/Click/Poke to enlarge.)
This is the first (quick) effort to capture the general idea. No reference was used (as evidenced by the humongous head and weird toddler body on the Tiger), and I briefly toyed with the idea of having just the wings up there. I quickly decided it looked too much like a tramp stamp from the early 2000s and scratched the idea. But the trap was there, and the Thread making its way from the ground, through the Tiger, up to the wings was there. It was just... not right.
See, I was not too fond of the Tiger's pose. It was a) too reminiscent of "Chase..." and b) too dorky, like a kid trying to reach the cookie jar. Which is not necessarily a bad idea for this, but it accentuated the wrong note. It looked like the Tiger was jumping, not floating. So I changed it and arrived at the final composition, below. Note the Yin-Yang birds are in there now, too.
Now it was a matter of refining the sketch, tweaking the proportions, and making sure there were no obvious mistakes. A bit of reference, and a lot of artistic license and simplification, and we arrive at the final lineart for the sketch:
Pretty much everything was in place, including the general path the Red Thread was going to follow, so now it was time to pull out the digital crayons!
Colour!
I knew I wanted this one to be closer in colour to "These things we chase..." than to "These things we fear..." Not only because this piece is more hopeful but also because the three prints would look way better together that way. Having decided that, and having painted almost all the elements in the image before for the other two prints, it was relatively straightforward to come to a colour sketch that I liked:
Pretty simple, pretty straightforward, pretty green, and hopefully, plain pretty. Tap/Click/Poke to make it grow.
Now, if you’re into that sort of thing, here’s the whole process, from the initial ChunkyTiger, to the final colour sketch:
Here's the video. It looks better in fullscreen mode.
And now it was time to bring the coffee out and prepare to paint an endless sea of hair. Here comes…
The rest
By now, I think you've already realized that the real heavy lifting is done before I actually start painting the final thing, right?
Now, that does not mean there's not a lot of effort involved or that there are no changes during the actual painting process. Just deciding on a fluid shape for the Red Thread took me like half an hour and then another good 20 minutes of tweaking. It barely registers in the video, but it's there. As there are the other... Idk, 30 hours of tiny strokes and changes and second guesses.
Along the way, I changed the trap, fought with the Thread, and had a minor mental breakdown trying to make those birds work. I am not 100% satisfied with everything (but then again, I never am), but I am 100% happy I was able to bring this piece to its final shape. I hope you enjoy seeing it and reading about how it came to be.
And to cap things, I'll let you with some detail images, and with the timelapse video in TWO formats: the traditional one and then a "staccato" one, made with screenshots I took along the way. Let me know if you prefer one or the other, OK? And let me know what you think of the pieces themselves. I would love to hear your take.
See you next time, folks!
And look at the whole thing, and then take a gander at it, living on a virtual wall:
Yeah, grrrrrrreennnnn!!
Finally, here are the promised timelapses:
Try them full-screen. They look remarkably better.
I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you learned something about the piece, me, or maybe about yourself while reading it. If anything, I tried to make it fun. And hey, there's always the piece itself.
If you like it, and if you liked the story behind it, there are a couple things you can do to support me and help me keep drawing animal avatars for our inner dreams and terrors:
You can get a print (or seven.😉)
If you're not yet part of the gang, you can join my mailing list. I always show my work first in my emails. And at gang-only prices, too.
You can buy me the proverbial cup of coffee. That way, my cats will stay chunky and I’ll be able to use them as models for my ChunkyTigers.
Above all, thank you for reading my rants and trying to make sense of them. It means a lot having you here. And as always, let me know how I'm doing. Shoot me an email or a DM, follow me on social media, or just think really hard in my general direction. All of it helps, and who knows? Maybe I'll discover I'm a telepath!
See you next time!
-Julián
