Friday was IA 2009 last day, in a short week, intense and unforgettable, ending up at the Sports Page, in a party that could easily be called the “Illustrated Burger”, as it was so similar to our “Illustrated Steak” in Brazil.
More than 50 folks having fun and drawing at the tables, sketchbooks all over the place, check out the pictures at my Flickr.
I put into practice an idea I had at the Academy back in 1998, which was collecting autographs from my heroes in a baseball. I only had the chance to buy the ball in the last week, and I got Mark English, John English, George Pratt, Brent Watkinson, Doug Chayka, Sterling Hundley and Natalie Ascencios sign it.
Other giants that I missed in this little trophy were Gary Kelley, Chris Payne, Robert Meganck, Jon Foster, Barron Storey, Ted Kinsella, Robin Eley, Andrea Wicklund, Francis Livingstson and Anita Kunz. I’ll have to wait for another chance.
I jumped into the projects on the last two weeks, and in this image I approached a different way to finish the piece as I’d normally do, to get what the IA offers as the most important and interesting thing: to get out of your comfort zone and do something beyond that discovering new paths, techniques and solutions.
I’ve broken the geometry, perspective and the shapes a bit, and during the rendering of the final image, Mark English gave me straight and simple orientations: “flatten your shapes, and reduce tone variation to a minimum. Avoid over-rendering, less is more, right?”. The outcome was indeed much better than what I’d have done in my regular rendering, and I will take home a new way of thinking visually, and I can see many new possibilities on my future pieces.
After all, this is the real spirit of the IA: Transformation. It is indeed an incredible experience, and new insights happened on my third time around.
On returning the concepts are interpreted with new layers of meaning, triggering new synapses, new ways of seeing and making images, it’s kinda hard to explain, but that’s the way things go to every returning student.
Today was a more introspective day, it’s time to think things over, to absorb and internalize this immense amount of information.
By the end of the day there were only three student at the campus dorms - Sarah, from Kuwait and Leah from Canada, and me - and we had the rare and rewarding opportunity to have dinner and go to the movies with George Pratt to see “Hangover”, a great comedy. We did have a lot of fun.
Tomorrow will be my day to get into the plane and go back home, with the words from the “Academy Guy”, a.k.a. Brent Watkinson, in my mind: “Go out in the real world, and do something worthwhile”.
