Time and Time Again

Time is a funny thing. I believe that for the most part it is an artificial construct that humanity has set upon itself to create some meaning of order. When I say it's artificial I just mean that one could simply say "I'll do stuff while the sun is up" instead of needing a numeric representation of the passage of the day, but I guess I'm getting a little ahead of myself and way out into left field.

The image I have been working on for the past couple of weeks was to illustrate time. Naturally, my view of time is very much based on how I interact with it on a daily basis, namely through intervals. Buses run on intervals, my CD player indicates intervals, just me being in between the places I need to be is a form of interval (most often I need to transfer at least once to get where I'm going, so I often spend time in places that really serve no other purpose than to provide a place to stand).

The most difficult part of this image was that I really wanted the "watch" to be the main focus of the image (even now I think it's competing a little with the hand, but overall there's a nice visual flow as you see the hand, follow the fingers down to the watch, follow the chain up to the headphones, up to the figure and then back to the hand), but because it was such a small element overall, adding in other elements could have been disaterous (basically the loss of all the nice little details). So that's how the long perspective shot pretty much came into being. Of course that had it's own set of problems, like making sure the headphones didn't end up floating in the ether.

In the end it very much came out looking like what I imagined in my head, at least the watch and headphones. The rest kind of just came together in the process. Lucky.

I thing that I do think I need to work on with my illustration is that the images don't have to be photo realistic. I am continually amazed by Dave Mckean's work and now the work of Diane Fenster and John Paul Caponigro. Their works truly showcase a boundless creativity and a reminder that with illustration, it's not about recreating what the world sees, but creating what you see. The camera blindly looks at the world and records it. It is the photographer that looks at the world and interprets it.

"Intervallia"

Detail of the "watch."