Lizard decorating, part 2

Once I had my metal lizard stripped of its old paint and a new, exciting “color shift” basecoat applied, it was time to start ABORTIVE ATTEMPTING my way towards a decoration.

I needed a template, so I uploaded a photo to Pixelmator Pro and outlined the lizard:

(One of the surprise benefits of having to buy a new laptop recently is that now I can use my iPad as a graphics tablet!)

That produced a serviceable outline:

You will notice that it is sloppy. Clearly if I were making this for another purpose I might need to tidy it up, but for ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS at design, this is absolutely good enough.

That’s right, class, “good enough” is in fact good enough. Why would you spend time making sure that this outline is clean enough to print in a coloring book when all you need is the outline? When what you’re going to do with it is create a lot of crap that you can discard?

The only reason to spend that much time on something like this is because you are afraid of getting to work and MAKING MISTAKES. Pfft.

Make the mistakes.

Here are mine, so far:

If I go with this idea, the entire surface will be filled with scribbles and shapes. I like the idea of the spirals — they fit in with the GALAXY project — the rest of the surface will come later, perhaps.

As I wrote on the sketch, the best way to see if your first idea is the best idea is to discard it and do something not that. (It’s like the cheesy adage says, if you love something set it free…) I like the spine of simple geometric shapes — would I continue them all the way down the tail or out the legs?

Of course I am not creating all this in a vacuum. I have several lizards in my collection from Mexico/South America decorated in extravagant folk fashion, not to mention the dot paintings of the Australian aborigines. All of these are informing my sketches, and the end result will be a nod to those traditions.

GALAXY update: My order from coolneon.com arrived Monday afternoon. I will be building the prototype rings later this week/weekend.