Forward Thinking

February 20 1967 – April 5 1994
November 27 1942 – September 18 1970
September 14 1983 – July 23 2011
October 9 1940 – December 8 1980
February 6 1945 – May 11 1981

A Million Ideas

These are still early days for MaadWeb and my portfolio is still in its infancy. Most of my time is spent working on any new projects that I can. I’ve got a million different ideas for artwork that I want  to get done and time is what is holding me back.

In the future, I would love to have a body of work big enough to start social media and email campaigns based around certain dates. It must be great to be able to post an awesome John Lennon artwork on October 9^th (his birthday) in celebration of the great man. This day will come.

Missed Boats

What got me thinking about this is that I’m currently working on a Bob Marley piece that you may have seen in my last blog or on social media. Now, May 11^th was the 40^th anniversary of Marley’s death. On May 11^th, I was actually working on that piece, thinking about the massive boat that I’d missed. Seeing other people’s posts on Facebook about it, and watching the ship sail by.

I could have rushed the piece through, cut some corners and put out something sub-standard that I wasn’t particularly happy with, but that’s not the way I work, and not at all what I’m abut. The reason my work takes as long as it does is because I literally paint it pixel by pixel. Every pixel you see has been individually put there by myself and there are typically just under 58,000 in every piece. No filters, no apps, no shortcuts. Just myself and a really old version of Photoshop. I don’t even use any of the features that Photoshop has – literally just the pencil and the eraser. And sometimes the text.

Plan Ahead

I know exactly what I need to do – look ahead. See what’s coming up. Start working on something that can be completed before the date comes so that I can start a campaign around it.

The Euros start next month. I love football so this is a perfect opportunity. I could use this event to push my almost-completed Ibrahimovic piece. What’s that? He’s injured? FFS.

Anyway, must go. I’ve got an appointment to give blood and a Bob Marley piece that I’ve got to finish before next May.

Lessons learned: spend time filling my calendar with important dates, and use these dates to plan my schedule. Cynical as that sounds, there are that many pieces I want to do, and I enjoy doing this so much, I know I’ll still love this. And if I don’t keep selling, I’ll have to stop doing this full stop.

My next piece: Something to do with the Euros. Any idea of who will win? Or player of the tournament?

Today’s boxset: The Pact.