MEDIA: 

- Original drawings created with Ball-point and Micron pens, Copic markers, Prismacolor markers, Montana paint markers, and white-out pens. 

- Modified heavily with Adobe Photoshop.

DIMENSIONS:

- 24” x 18” @300dpi, final .psb (large format .psd) file size of ~5.3 gb (opening this piece and moving layer groups around on-screen frequently pushed the limits of my MacBook’s processing power, and at many points nearly brought it to its knees!)

ABOUT:

Started out back in 2012 as part of a class project during my time as an undergraduate student, this piece has gone through a great deal of experimentation and evolution since its inception. I originally started this piece out with a still-life drawing of a pineapple that I bought for a homemade pineapple chicken recipe, and created this drawing in the process of waiting for the pineapple to fully ripen. Over time, I ended up adding in a variety of extra content, and changed the overall composition of the piece many times to get it to where it is today. I ended up putting this piece on a shelf not long after completing the aforementioned class project in 2012, but rediscovered my interest in exploring it further in the fall of 2019. 

I officially declared this piece as completed in  October of 2020, and after 8 crazy months of quarantine brought on by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel that finishing this piece in many ways provided me with a much-needed mental escape from the bleak reality of the daily struggle of life in the time of Coronavirus. I imagine that I am not the only one who has been feeling this way lately, but I have been personally feeling like I could really use a vacation. Since that’s not entirely possible at the moment, because, you know.. I figured I would just dream up my own so I could at least pretend in the meanwhile! This piece didn’t originally start out with any one specific place in mind, but over time I think it started to take on a real Hawaiian sort of vibe, and I therefore tried to only include species of flora and fauna that are native to the Hawaiian islands. I have never been to Hawaii before though, so hopefully I was able to do it justice!

I hope that everyone reading this is staying safe and healthy, and that this piece will allow a sort of mental vacation to all of those in need.