PATTERN Piece
Today I thought I’d mention a piece I did in spring of last year, for none other than Indy’s own Pattern magazine! If you haven’t seen this magazine, go check it out! Every issue is beautiful, local, and incredibly well designed.
In spring of 2023, Pattern called me to ask if I’d like to do a piece for the Food issue, based on one of the five tastes! (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami) I said said yes, of course! I was thrilled to the gills! They called five artists, one for each flavor. I was assigned to do ‘salty’! A family friend of ours, the amazing and incredible Lindsay Hadley recommended me to the magazine for this project, (thank you!!) since she works at Pattern as an ASTOUNDING design director.
I was so super excited to do this project, but I found myself getting overwhelmed with all the possibilities. Do I do an abstract work that emanates what I envision as “salty”? Do I make a collage of salty foods and arrange them nicely as if it was an internet food blog? And even past just the concept, what materials do I use? I thought about using literal salt, perhaps trying the watercolor and salt “starburst” effect, I considered maybe drawing literal salt crystals… it was quite the process!!
Eventually, after a couple thousand rounds of doodles with the concept in mind, I ran across this idea of a bowl with a plethora of salty foods spilling out of the top. So I tried it in a couple of different styles and mediums. I tried paint, collage, pencil, everything! Nothing was really striking my fancy, though. The paint looked okay, but it seemed very unrefined. The collage was tedious and looked unfinished and pointless. The pencil felt overly predictable and too smooth for the concept. It was TREMENDOUSLY frustrating.
About a week in, my mom and I were going through her studio closet (because in the Dullaghan household, cleaning solves all woes) and we unearthed a box of old India inks previously used for Gelli plate printing. I was entranced by the color and foreign consistency, and decided to try out my “salty” piece as lineart, inked with a long, thin brush and my newfound inks!
I ended up loving the line quality and slightly less controlled look to the ink technique, and I ended up with a final I was proud of. I scanned it into my computer and then let it sit for a day before sending. I find this little break to be a useful trick for the creative process, especially for big works like this one. It lets you get over the original “glimmer” of new work, and then look at with fresh eyes and think about things you could tweak to improve the work.
The original piece was in black and white, with plain black ink on normal printer paper. After I let it sit for a bit, I decided to play around with adding some color. So I added in the yellow and blue that you see in the finished piece.
Overall, I’m really proud of how it turned out. And on top of that, I discovered a new technique for linework that I used to create the Wednesday Webcomic, my Happy Birthday Song cartoon, and many others!
It just goes to show, “When in doubt, clean yo’ house!”
If you’d like to check out the issue, click here! (My piece is on page 43, but definitely make sure to admire the whole gorgeous magazine, because it’s a really cool little pocket of foodie culture around Indianapolis!)
Big thanks to Lindsay Hadley for recommending me for this project, and to all the people at Pattern for giving me this amazing opportunity!