“The Swimmer”
Today I’m releasing my new art print, «The Swimmer»! (As well as this blog! However long or short lived it might be).
The print is sold by ByHands and Too Many prints and comes in three different sizes, limited editions. 50x70 cm, 70x100 cm and the major league 140 x 100 cm.
For a long time I’ve had this urge to make a drawing with a certain mood or feel, but whenever trying I haven’t managed to catch whatever it is I’m seeking to draw. But after rewatching an old favorite film, «The Swimmer», a few weeks ago, I grabbed my iPad and managed to nail a rough composition that worked. At first it was very simple, just a thin man jumping into a pool and a horizon, but for some reason I knew I was onto something. Something about the angle of the pool and the way he jumped or something.
The very first composition, felt a spark that let me know I was on track.
After a while I tried to have the main man jump out of and into frame, and I felt the composition came together. The fact that you don’t know if he’s nude or sporting a speedo. Since then I’ve been working a lot on this drawing, but when I finally felt that it was finished, I realized that I wanted to start all over again. I’ve never had this feeling before, but I understood that I just had to follow my gut feeling and start all over in order to keep my inner peace.
The discarded first version.
The first version was very crowded, more detailed and maybe more of an «illustration». Nothing wrong with that, and I like it, but I understood that what I wanted with this motive was something less obvious, more mystical and open. My colleague Lars Fiske has his studio right across the hall and I asked him to have a look when I was close to finish on the first version. He rightfully pointed out that there was a lot of stuff going on. Particularly the reflections in the pool, which I realized competed with their own reflection source. I started to remove the reflections and I think it was at this point I got a sense that I maybe seeked another, more clean direction.
So, I kept the swimmer and the main composition but threw everything else out and built it up from scratch until it reached a balance that resonated with me and had more openness.
Work in process, after scrapping the first version, on my way to a cleaner look. At this point it was getting too crowded again.
I guess it might be idiotic to show both versions. The risk is that people prefer the discarded version or maybe other stages of the process, but I still think it might be interesting (at least to a few drawing nerds) so I wanna share this process.
Speaking of nerds: I mainly worked in Procreate on my new iPad Pro, but I also airdropped it to my studio mac and did some rounds in photoshop on my big Cintiq drawing screen. This was especially useful for the final quality check, to look for small errors and traces of the insanely idiotic color drop tool in Procreate. I’ve been going on about this before, but no matter how much you try to fix the threshold when color dropping, there’ll be this vague feathered line that will come back and haunt you further down the road. Spending hours when the drawing is practivaly finished just zooming around an cleaning up old ghost lines. Such a drag! But other than that I love Procreate.
Inspiration:
«The Swimmer» (1968), featuring Burt Lancaster giving a spectacular performance. A man gets this idea that he wants to swim home to his villa on the other side of the valley. Not through a lake or river, but through the many pools lying in an almost straight line, belonging to people he knows. What starts out as an idyllic and slight mysterious opening turns into a nightmare of masculine crisis on full display.
I invited Don Logan, the fantastic sociopath from Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast” (2000). In the first version he was more directly implemented, while in the final version he got more abstract. Almost looking like a tired husband coming home from work finding a wild party in his pool.
Detail with Don Logan, Ben Kingsley’s insane character in “Sexy Beast”.
David Hockney is a main inspiration for me, particularly in this motive. I borrowed a couple of palms and a house from «A Bigger Splash», as a remixed homage. (Which I also paid tribute to in an illustration I did for The New Yorker some years ago, about the TV Show Bojack Horeseman, which includes many nice Hockney references).
My Bojack illustration for The New Yorker (possible to buy a print here).
To get in the mood for a cheesy pool party I listened to one of my guilty pleasures, Simply Red, while drawing this. I really like his first album «Picture Book». In his best moments he’s almost in the neighbourhood of my big hero Sade, but some of his later stuff can get too rich for my taste. To balance it a little bit I also listened to a lot of Antonio Carlos Jobim, particularly “Wave” and “Tide” (which Lars Fiske recommended to me).
“The Swimmer” can be ordered here and here!
