Eye of the Beholder: Jason Edmiston
JASON EDMISTON is a Canadian commercial illustrator and classically trained painter. Though his work dabbles in emulating popular culture and retro style advertising, his style of depicting the figure through exaggeration or extreme realism is matched with both humor and sincerity.
You once described as a kid that you could vividly remember the experience of seeing an amazing piece of art, and being stopped in your tracks, as a child what was one of those pieces?
It was a group of Frank Frazetta paintings. There was something magical when you’re at that impressionable age when you’re old enough to really start noticing specific artists, and understanding their style. The colors, and the action were so vibrant. They were tight, but loose at the same time. They were full of action. He did a lot with just a few little brushstrokes, but it looks so realistic, except when you look at it up close, it’s very much like an impressionistic painting. As a kid, I loved looking at all the details and that really stuck out to me that I ended up buying or asking for Frank Frazetta books for Christmas every year.They would have these collections of all his posters and a few pencil sketches and stuff in it. The other thing that I remember the most vividly would be the box art to G.I. Joe action figures.
I loved those!
They’re great! I love the explosion behind them and it was back lit and had the edge lighting. If you look at those paintings, I basically transformed the way I used to paint into that style, like that basically has become my style. Similar to the Hildebrand brothers, who are known for their J.R.R. Tolkien characters, they paint the same way with a lot of saturated colors and a lot of colored edge lighting with a lot of high contrast. That’s what I always gravitated towards. Also the covers of MAD magazine. If you look at all those illustrators and painters, evidence of their teachings can be found in my work in different areas, whether it’s lighting or form or expression, or a little bit of exaggeration. I’ve stolen from the best. I think the goal of an artist is to kind of look around it all, see what is possible, what others have done, cherry pick what you like aesthetically the most, and turn that into something that you put out. Hopefully you create something that’s new.
Do you feel that you first started illustrating by having that artistic eye, or did the influences that you mentioned helped getting you started with your career?
I think it’s evident in a lot of different artistic endeavors. If you look at comicbook artists, for instance, you can see they were definitely “students” of a certain artist before them. I say students in quotations, because you can tell that they looked up to these artists, and then when they became artists themselves, they drew pretty much like their inspirations. Greg Capullo looks like Todd McFarlane, and there’s a million different artists whose work looks like Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld, but the goal is to develop yourself enough beyond that initial influence. I think somebody like Greg Capullo, for example, has surpassed being a clone of MacFarlane, he’s better than McFarlane. I mean, Todd McFarlane has a very recognizable style, but Capullo is a better draftsman, and he’s expanded on those techniques which is the goal of an artist, right? This is what happened with the old masters. They would copy their predecessors, and in some ways, they would also be literal teachers to them.
Passion and fondness for a property seem to be a driving force when it comes to executing the best work for most of the artists we have interviewed. Does this help for you as well?
Yeah, it’s funny, because the art of painting or drawing is the same no matter what you’re drawing. But the joy you get when you’re drawing something that you enjoy, is much more intense than if you were just to draw something that you have no interest in. The first 10 years of my career was full of doing covers for law magazines, grocery chains, and ads for fabric softener, just mundane advertising and editorial illustration. I had no passion for it and it was drudgery to try to get through the day. But I’m essentially doing the same thing. I’m looking at something, I’m redrawing it, I’m coloring it with paint, and I’m doing the exact same act as I’m doing now, but I’m having so much more fun. The time just flies by or I’m challenged by it because I can’t wait to show a painting or a piece of art that other people that might enjoy.
It must have been difficult for you to execute. But you got over it?
Yeah, I had that happen when I recently revealed the new [He-Man] Snake Mountain box packaging art for Super7. That painting was a real drag to paint a lot of the time because although the subject matter was fun, and the colors were really bright and everything, it was so detailed and heavy that it was really soul heavy, you know? It’s like, that’s crushing just kind of like, Oh, you’re so tired by the end of the day, because you’re concentrating on these little bits of detail and even though you’re painting it really large, everything’s detailed, so heavily packed in, and you’re just fighting it thinking to yourself “It’s not looking good.” It looked terrible for three out of the four weeks that I was working on it. And then it finally came together at the end when you put all the finishing touches on. But when you’re in the middle of it, you just fight through it. I had to dig the ditches.
How do you get over the hump creatively if you aren’t passionate about a property?
You can’t not do it. There’s a lot of things that motivate you when you say to yourself “I’m going to be proud of this. I want to show it to my friends, or my followers, or my client.” So that’s a positive reinforcement. That’s something that drives you. It’s a positive influence. But there’s also a negative drive that hinders you equally, where you say “I’m afraid of screwing up, I’m afraid of having a bad piece out there, people are going to be commenting that this is terrible. I’m afraid of disappointing the client, I’m afraid that they’re not going to pay me.” Those things drive me equally. And usually, I’m pretty busy, so I’ve always got a tight deadline, because I’ve always got something backed up right behind it that I’ve got to get on to the next job. So, I don’t have a lot of time for one thing to expand, and take my sweet time with it, because I have that next job. Then the following week, and if I miss that, I’m going to miss the next one. It’s a never-ending Human Centipede when you have deadlines approaching. You’ve got to keep on top, and I don’t always meet them. Things happen sometimes, but usually the bigger fear is the fear of disappointment. I do set a lot of lofty goals for myself, but they’re not always achieved. If you set high goals for yourself, and you achieve most of them, then you’re doing better than most.
We interviewed an artist recently and discussed the use of models and how important they were about really getting the best out of a piece of work. You also use models heavily in your work and share the set ups on social media. What is it about them that helps you?
I don’t have a photographic memory, but I can understand something if I see it and make it my own, I usually need a photo reference to understand how the light falls on it and how to shape it by extrapolating that information. What I try to do, without making a carbon copy, is to make something that looks iconic and cannon to that character, but also something brand new, that you’ve never seen before. Let’s say if I’m working with a headshot, I try to pick something. Sometimes I have to stick with something that’s iconic, and well known, just because that might be the only thing that exists there, or works best for the scene. But for the body, I will do a rough sketch of the pose and whatever costume that person’s wearing just to get that approved. Then I’ll go shoot a model, and I’ll match the lighting to the model to match the photo reference for the head. Since I do a lot of pop culture work, it’s usually based around a physical head and a recognizable face. Say I’ve got a picture of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and I’ve got the perfect head expression. I want him laughing a bit with his head thrown back or something. I’ve got the lighting on the right side. In my sketch, I have his body with his arms out. Now, I know I’ve got to pose a model with his arms out with the lighting on the same side. Maybe they cast the shadow of the chin on their chest so it all incorporates these elements, and makes it look like it’s a brand new work based on a brand new photo that never existed.
I love that your dad is your model for some of your greatest pieces, do you ever find it strange directing him around to get the perfect pose?
That was something I took from the Hildebrand brothers when they would have their sons or their wives pose as hobbits or queens or kings, make cardboard swords, and dress them up in capes, boots and everything else, so when they shot them, just like Alex Ross does, it would look real because they actually used clothing that seemed similar in the way a cloak would fall on the arms. It looks believable because you’re not really making up something. It has real weight to it. I like to incorporate it. My father poses for a lot of stuff. I’ve posed on my own or I’ll get my wife to take pictures of me, but I don’t like to do that because I like to compose the way I see it in camera. It really is a head trip when you try to act for the scene by yourself.
When researching a new character to paint what things do you look for? Character traits, wardrobe choices, etc. For example, your portrait of David from The Lost Boys (1987) really centered around his seductive powers and mind control, and wanting to display that quiet power, but how do you finally center on that for a character?
I do try to figure out what makes them the most “What are they about? What would say the most about that person? What encapsulates the character?” That was one where I wanted to illustrate his powers of seduction, trying to impress Michael. It’s a very subtle “you’re afraid of me, but you want to be with me too, at the same time” moment. There are just a few well known press photos of Kiefer [Sutherland] from that movie. And so obviously, I did pick one of those, because you can’t take your eyes off of him. Women want to be with him and men want to be him, that sort of thing. There’s also an amalgamation of how one could recall the set from memory, but not screen accurate. I had a broken column in here, some drapery, burning candles, and that poster of Jim Morrison. I don’t like those illustrations where it looks like you just painted a screenshot of the movie, because I feel like that’s just a technique experiment. You don’t want a comic book cover to look like a panel inside the comic book. You want it to look specifically like it could only ever be associated with that comic book.
We have had other artists discuss the use of the “hook” of a poster especially in horror work? Do you look to include something like that in your work, something people need to look for?
Yeah, I do do that, sometimes. I don’t necessarily make it a necessity in the work. I usually just let it speak to me. “What would I find interesting? With this assignment, what do I want to play up the most?” It’s sometimes fun to add a hook. Take my Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988) for instance, I made one of the clown villains, the actual planet, and I made the spaceship big top floating in space with some popcorn stars. That kind of had a hook and it was a visual cliché, but it also was, in ways just the hero shot of the villains, the clowns, which are the most interesting part of the movie, right? So that one kind of walked the line between the two. When I can figure out something that is a hook like that I’ll include it, but it’s not a necessity in my posters. I don’t really have a hard and fast rule for when I incorporate that hook.
We asked this question to Matt Ryan Tobin as well, but what do you think is the reason horror is so popular in Canada? Canadians seem to love it and there seems to be a big congregation of Canadian artists very much involved in the horror scene, why do you think that is?
I never thought about that. I think it’s because it’s the most extreme thing to our experience. As Canadians–now mind you, we have a sketchy history–but as modern Canadians living in a multicultural country, it’s quite peaceful and idyllic in many ways. We don’t have a lot of natural predators, as they say. I think having a love for horror is a safe way to get out, shake out the sillies or whatever you want to call it, your extreme emotions. You want to cry and scream and be fearful because we have a very peaceful life up here. It doesn’t make us afraid; it tends to be a comforting thing. It’s almost like going on a rollercoaster ride.
Your closed crop Universal Classic Monsters head studies were based on the U.S. postage stamps in the ’90s, do you always tend to look at different mediums for inspiration?
It just kind of sticks around. It’s funny, I don’t have a photographic memory, but I have a good visual memory. So generally, I will think of a piece that I can think of fondly and it’ll stick in my brain, knowing I’ll want to do something with that someday. For instance, I often refer to the Kiss solo albums as a big influence, again, the same repeating kind of pose with the same colored edge lighting to represent each of the characters. It’s purposeful, in a series that they really wanted them to look like they were part of a team, but individuals at the same time. So, when I’m thinking of a new piece, sometimes I’ll think of this monster magazine from the ‘40s or something and wonder if I can do something with that. So, I kind of take that as a jumping off point and then do my own version of that. Sometimes it’s very literal, and I don’t always do it, but it’s fun for me. Speaking about Ross again, he’ll often do that, where he’ll recreate classic comic book covers or posters in his style, but it’ll be a fully fleshed out version of Action Comics #1. I find that really interesting. I think that he and I have a very similar way of looking at art. He’s a fan of Norman Rockwell and modern advertising art, and that has colored our view of what modern illustration should be. New but classic.
Having done the Universal Classic Monsters series a few years ago and then now revisiting them as posters rather than portraits, do you find that hard to go back to a property or exciting to put a new spin on it as it is a completely different style?
Yeah, more exciting, because I felt like I wanted to flesh it out a bit more. I wanted to do a little bit more with it. I mean, it’s about as tight as you can go, says the guy who’s painted 300 portraits of just eyes. But I felt there was more to do with their body language, and if you’re going to revisit them, you might as well go for more of the body and really set it up more like a traditional movie poster because the other ones were more like art prints. They didn’t have any text, they were just headshots. So, doing a movie poster, I wanted it to be a bit more like presenting the Phantom of the Opera (1925), since it’s very grand and you have that big title block in the credits. I really only wanted to do that series, if they could get the rights to credit blocks. There’s a lot of artists that don’t do posters if there’s no credit blocks. In this series in particular, I was only interested if it had full credits, because I really wanted to create my own version of those classic posters. I love the original Mummy (1932) poster. I want to do the whole series that has that kind of vibe to it that mixes with my love of toys from the ‘60s. At the same time, I don’t want something that looks exactly like this came from 1935, only it was made in 2020. I don’t want to do that specifically, I want to do something where you notice it’s obviously referencing the ‘30s, but also the ‘60s, while also referencing modern illustration. For me, that’s what makes it exciting and makes that arc look wholly original, yet classic. So that’s my goal.
I love the fact that you had a concept, specifically your Halloween (1978) poster, and then were able to almost make a 1B version to compliment and mirror your 1A. How did that idea come about? Was that always the plan?
Funny enough, that was not planned going in because I thought I’d just do one hero shot of Michael Myers, and I was rewatching the movie, looking for interesting scenes that weren’t played out. And I didn’t want to do just him with the knife because in that, you also have to look at what’s been done before with the property. Halloween specifically has been done to death with Michael and the knife standing stoically and staring at you. It’s been done so many times, and it’s uninteresting to me. So, I wanted to have an action scene, but I wanted something that would actually be scary. I watched the movie a bunch of times again, and I just kept watching him during that closet scene. I’ve maybe seen that scene illustrated, but I haven’t seen it illustrated with any kind of power, because people will just take a screenshot, and my scene doesn’t really represent an exact screenshot in that movie. It’s kind of like what you think the movie is about. That’s a saying that I got from Rob Jones at Mondo. You want to illustrate what you think it looks like, not what it actually is. Illustrate the idea of the scene and not the literal scene. We don’t make it actually what people remember, which is hard to think. But when you’ve been away from a property for a while, you’re like, “Oh, I remember when that character did that.” So, I wanted to do something terrifying, where he’s coming in the closet. I also feel like vertical posters are more powerful than horizontal posters. Horizontal posters tend to work better for something like The Hateful Eight (2015), where you’ve got this grand panoramic scene. But if you want something with a marquee appeal, the vertical posters tend to have more impact, even though that was a horizontal scene. In order to make that work, you have to change the perspective to squish it in, otherwise, a lot of the interesting parts are going to bleed off the edges, like the doors or the edge of the closet. By making it more vertical and more closed in, you automatically make it more claustrophobic. I like his head, when he’s kind of looking sideways and just his eyes are turned to the viewer, because it has the most impact. I want the body filling up the scene. And then you bring the hand in with the knife. You’re looking up at almost an extreme angle looking up at him, which makes him look bigger because it also mimics the angle of the camera which is supposed to be from Laurie’s point of view looking up at him. So, he’s scarier. And so, you’ve established this triangular composition by looking up at Michael and the knife being like the peak of the triangle, right? It’s got all that power coming down to the title. It all is super powerful that that triangular design. When I had the opportunity to do another Halloween poster a couple years later I thought, “What if I did the flip view from Michael’s point of view? Looking down at Laurie.” I knew I had to flip the composition. So, it’s actually, instead of a vertical triangle, it’s a V. I literally took the main perspective line grid of that composition, and I flipped it. And that’s now my composition. You’re looking down at her, and she’s sitting on the carpet looking up at him. And then you have enough visual cues from the first poster and the exact same color palette as the first poster. Not to toot my own horn but I’m very proud of those posters. That turn where you actually make the camera angle tell a story. I’m really happy with how that one turned out.
The same is similar to your Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), rather than going for a pose you almost explored a feeling of terror and fear. What made you choose that direction?
I have toyed with the idea of doing a Texas Chainsaw hero shot because I’ve done one for Friday the 13th (1980), Nightmare [on Elm Street] (1984) and Halloween. I pitched a bunch of ideas to Grey Matter Art when I did that poster and that just happened to be the one that everybody settled upon. I was watching the movie and looking for scenes that I could pull from for inspiration, and I liked that opening scene with the corpse sitting on the gravestones, but I had pitched the close up of the eye of the final girl because you see her with these horrified eyes, her mascara’s running and looking terrified. I thought “Oh my God, that’s awesome.” The emotion that one shot has was mainly there just by itself. Then I brought in the old gimmick of the reflection in the eye. It’s been done many times before, but I feel like it works super effective in this one because you see what she’s looking at. I was surprised it hadn’t been done yet. I remember Jay Shaw at Mondo did a version of it for Friday the 13th where he had a reflection in the eye as well. It’s been done a million times, like with Deliverance in the ‘70s. But it works. It’s so effective. It’s actually the cover for my book. You can’t not look at it, you know what I mean? There’s something about this hulking villain coming at you, with this female that’s tearing up. You get a visceral response, and that actually became the title of my book, Visceral. I got another opportunity a year later to do another Texas Chainsaw poster. And I love that movie, so I thought “Well, I have these other concepts. What do you think about this other one?” That became the armadillo concept where I have the van driving away, it’s actually two merged scenes from the beginning of the movie. It’s kind of like this foreboding feeling or foreshadowing what’s going to happen to these teenagers. So, I have this dead armadillo as the foreground character, kind of implying death. And that I guess would be a hook. That one became very successful too. It ended up being a movie poster for the 14th anniversary at South by Southwest, a DVD cover, and a box set cover. That one was quite popular for me as well. So you don’t throw up those old sketches because they might come around again for another purpose, you know?
More than other artists in the AMP, you seem to adapt to so many different mediums whether that be your portraits, posters, Eyes Without A Face (EWAF), and now swatches, do you feel that by exploring many mediums it makes the others stronger?
I’m doing a lot of things now that are so fun. They don’t make a lot of money because they’re usually smaller things, but they do sell well, so there’s a desire for them. I don’t see a lot of artists doing this, but I’m trying to do it with all different types of substrates. I’ll take playing cards, paint swatches, or coloring books, and do things with those found objects and add pop culture in my style onto them and make something entirely new. I think it’s really exciting because I thought “Oh, I never thought you could paint on a playing card and make something interesting out of it.” It’s not just using it as a blank piece of paper, but it’s specifically related to that playing card. So if you’re painting on a king, you want to do something related to a king, like King Kong or a T-Rex since it’s the king of the dinosaurs or you do Freddie Mercury, because Queen. So that’s exciting to me, because you’re taking from the medium, and turning into something new, and the responses I get are great. People are really excited by them because they’re fun, and it’s unexpected. With the paint swatches, I was at the hardware store, and saw that they all have names to them. They’re not just orange and blue. They have tuscany red or slate gray or whatever. And I tried to use the name of the color as inspiration for the subject matter that I’d draw on that swatch. The color doesn’t really matter, like the actual color, but it’s the name of the color that’s interesting. I took a whole series of jack o’ lantern oranges and turned them into Michael Myers portraits because it fits with the season. So that to me is exciting. Everything I do in art is purposeful and it’s thought out ahead of time. When I did Walter White on stone wipe, or Vanilla Ice on ice cold blue, I never I never thought about merging those two things together, but it works. I find most interesting is being inspired by the medium itself, you know, and trying out new substrates. Try painting on metal. Maybe I’ll paint Iron Man on a metal substrate or something, you know?
Your EWAF series is extremely popular. I love how you described the process of what to include, that is the slot of an exclusive club or a mail slot, how long did it take you to find that perfect ratio? Are you surprised by how successful it’s been received in the poster community? What’s been the feedback outside of it?
I thought the idea of this would have some legs because I had it fleshed out in my head. The more I thought about it, I had to actually sit down with my wife to go over the inception of the concept. We were driving home from her family, and I said, “Get out your phone. Let’s just recite some characters and make a list of all the things that we could do that would be recognizable and see if there’s any legs to this concept, because maybe you could do five and then that would be it.” It’s endless. And the longer I do it, the more I think that it’s applicable to more characters, and not just really obvious ones that have face paint, or genre characters that have costuming, but just regular human actors that have very distinctive eyes. I mean, you’ve got Jules from Pulp Fiction (1994), or you can do any number of Steve Buscemi. I mean, tell me you can’t recognize Steve Buscemi by just his eyes? It doesn’t matter what movie it’s from. There’re so many different characters that you could riff on that way. I had maybe 200, 300 names before I did my first show. After my second show, I had an additional 500 names. Now I probably have 1000 names in the database, thinking “Oh, I could do that one. That obscure movie, TV show, or that toy from the ‘80s. I could do classical paintings. 91 I could do the Mona Lisa, I could do a statue of David. Let’s expand it beyond human characters, beyond actors, do anything.” Projecting it onto so many different characters is exciting for me, but I also like that it’s got boundaries at the same time. Despite what size any kind of prints may be, I always paint the characters 1:1 scale, or as close to that as I can by calculating their size in relation to other things, people, or items. So, toys are toy size, or humans are human size, etc. I always try to make them the size they would be in reality, because I think that that’s going to have the most impact. It’s essentially shot like a widescreen movie screen cinema. They’re not all cinematic characters, but it specifically references those close tight, tight shots that you would get in a Sergio Leone movie, or in a horror movie, where again, it zooms in on the villain’s eyes. You always get that tight close-up shot. It’s infinitely interesting. I’m not tired of it yet because it’s a rendering exercise for me. Now I think “I wonder if I can paint this metal and have it be shiny, or paint this fur and have it look like real fur.” My goal now is to try to make things look as realistic as I can. I think I’m improving upon each previous one. If you look at the first gallery show, those pieces are a lot looser than what they could look like now if I did them today.
I would almost describe the reflection of the eye as your hook. Do you think of what might be on the other side of the eyes, what the character is looking at, to get that perfect expression?
Yeah, usually it’s the characters or the subject’s character and what makes them the most “them” just like before with the drawing room portraits. You want to make the ultimate version of that character. Sometimes it’s more evident than others. Part of the rules of the series is to have the character looking straight at the viewer, like that Kubrick stare, because normally in movies the actors don’t look right at the audience, even if they’re looking at a character that’s supposed to be beside the viewer. They’re never looking directly in their eyes, unless it’s reverent like Ferris Bueller. They save those moments for the most impact.
Do you find a certain expression connects with people more? Or is it just dependent on the character?
Yes, depending on the character as long as that character looks most like them. And that doesn’t necessarily mean aesthetics or their personality, it shouldn’t look too neutral. It should be saying a little bit about that person. Now a lot of the time, I’m illustrating genre characters, they’re easier than most because they’re either really outrageous, scary or very moody. That tends to be an easier sell than something that’s a little bit subtle, for example with Get Out (2017). He’s scared, he’s crying, tears are rolling down his face, his eyes are red. I might want to accentuate the redness of the eyes. That might not be every photo, but if you’re really crying and not acting, or they have those glycerin drops, your eyes would be red, the veins would be showing, your cheeks would be flushed, that sort of thing. Someone that is a bit more neutral, that’s a difficult challenge, especially if they’re just a regular human actor with a neutral expression, That’s the most challenging. If I were to do a realistic portrait of Gary Oldman with just a stoic expression, not looking mad and not looking happy, that is harder to do.
I find it a nice touch that you try to mimic the size of the actual character to the size of the Eyes so that they are a 1:1 ratio, which brings me to my favorite character you have ever done. The Stay Puft marshmallow man. Have you ever thought of topping that size? Maybe painting one on the size of a building?
Maybe if it was on the side of a building, I don’t know the ratio of pop culture characters to each other. I know King Kong was smaller than Stay Puft. With Stay Puft I did the calculations, and I figured out that he would be 100-feet tall or something. I knew the gallery size, and I think the ceiling was around nine feet high. I looked into different rolled canvases that I could get in and the most I could get was nine foot two. So I thought “Okay, I guess I’m doing nine feet because it just fits in the gallery height.” The length would just fit, and I think I had an extra foot at the end. The fact that it fit just on that wall, and only on that wall, is the reason why it’s the only painting of that gallery show that didn’t sell. I had a few offers, but they fell through because they measured their place and there was just not enough space for that to fit. To paint something bigger, I’d have to do a mural on a wall, and I don’t know about doing that because it would take so long, I’m not familiar with that technique, and it would not necessarily last that long because it only be up for a few years and get painted over. I’d be really happy to have somebody with deep pockets that says, “We want to hire you to do this.” Maybe the Eye of Sauron, that would be a great one to do.
What’s been your favorite EWAF you have done recently?
I really liked the Captain America portrait because it had flesh tones, leather, little matte metal accents, some colored lighting, and you’ve also got sweat and dirt on him. He’s got all these different little cool texture things. It took me a really long time to paint that, but I liked all the little nuances of that piece. Kind of like you’re encapsulating that whole scene into just those eyes. I always like to choose characters that have interesting features, whether that be different hair or they’ll have face paint that goes along the contours of their ears, maybe seeing tattoos, glasses or bringing in a hat. Different materials like painting shiny metal versus reflective glass. Some of the robot properties are really fun to paint. Painting metal or colored lights is really fun. I paint usually from dark to light, or from like middle tone, paint the shadows and then you go to light as you finish it, so the lightest thing you paint is always the last thing. When you’re painting shiny metal, light up little diodes, or glowing eyes, you paint the brightest part last. You’re literally making it glow as you finish it and putting on those last dabs of white. It almost is like it’s dead. Those last few touches, I love it. It’s a real experience to finish off that last piece of the puzzle. The Daft Punk duo was a lot of fun to paint with all that metal lights and the rainbow colors. That was a lot of fun for the same reason.
When was the last time you were able to do a Karaoke version of “Strutter” by KISS?
I don’t do too many songs, but I just love that song a lot, and it’s within my very narrow range. I also have a list on my phone beside my list of potential eyes, of karaoke songs that I can sing along to when they come on the radio or Spotify that are within my very small range. Most people are pretty forgiving. They’re like, “Yeah, I know. You’re not a singer, so we’re not gonna laugh too hard at you.” That’s actually the only fear I have that I think “Oh my god, I’m gonna sound really bad.” You know, you’re gonna get the flop sweat, turn red and everything, but it is a lot of fun. If you just let that go and just say “Fuck it. I’m just gonna do it. I don’t care if you like it or not, I’m having fun.” That should be the attitude for everything, especially as you get older. The less you care about what other people think about what you do, the more you enjoy the moment. You’ve got one life and just you want to have fun, and if you have fun, that’s all that matters. Right? If you’re not hurting anybody, have some fun. Especially with art.
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