This story begins the way many of my stories do; with an email from someone with a fun/kooky idea. This one was a little different than usual in that it had a general direction with almost no specifics at all. Clark wrote, "We asked him what he would like his room to be like and his response was "Monkeys in Space". You can run with that idea. Lol."
Over the following weeks, we emailed back and forth about the size of the project, and whether it'd be one large piece or a diptych or something else unusual. Then we came up with the idea of doing a rotating image that could be displayed two different ways. Mounted in a custom frame, it would allow for rotating the image to get two different scenes.
So off we went.
The concept would be this: two different groups of monkeys arriving on different sides of a (flat) planet. On one side, a group of monkeys sharing their bananas and working together to build a civilization on a new planet. Rockets, architecture, chess, music... progress! On the other side, we would find a society of hoarders, thieves and ruffians all behaving out of pure short-sighted self-interest. Their rockets would be poorly assembled and crashing. Their architecture, shoddy and crumbling.
Over the course of four months, we went from a big blank page to the following insanity. Everything was done with pigma micron pens (0.25mm, black) and watercolor paints. Pencil drafting was done for layout, but lots of the details weren't planned out before the ink.
This was a personal milestone, as it is by far the largest and most detailed piece I've completed to date. It was an absolute joy to do, but that doesn't mean it came free of frustrations. Like anything else, there were moments of frustration. There were times when I thought it would never actually be done. And there were SO many times that I was afraid that something was going to go awry - an ink spill, water damage, a food spill, etc.
But hey, we made it! And Clark was awesome enough to invite me over to personally deliver the completed project to Elliot to explain it to him and to see his reaction. It was pretty awesome, to say the least. Enjoy the photos below.
