Making 'Tick tick boom'

On Sunday I started using Posca pens (made by Mitsubishi a Japanese company) which are sort of like a cross between a Biro and a paintbrush, laying down a thick impasto when used on paper. They allow you to run right over bits of collage, even newsprint, leaving a heavy trace to see.

I’d collected in my phone the phrase “tick tick boom” and when I was watching the news about Nathaniel Train I decided to do a work including his face. As a result of all these ideas I made the watercolour panels and when they dried as usual I applied the collage letters.

Then I stopped.

I finished the letters one evening and decided to leave the Posca marks until the next day. When morning arrived I still hadn’t made up my mind to start, I was a bit worried about making a mistake, but the delay meant I could think about the colour to use for the Posca marks, and I settled on blue and white to point to the police. I emailed a friend talking about my quandary but in the evening I settled in to do the marking anyway even without her feedback. By the time her email arrived I’d finished (see below).

My friend said the best way to deal with this sort of fear is to confront it. “What are you afraid of anyway” If I wasted a sheet of paper, so what? I had written:

Have started a new work, 'Tick tick boom', but I'm a bit scared of the Posca stage. I put down the collage y'day afternoon so now I just have to draw in the figures and other objects but am thinking to try first with a pencil. I've done two of these Posca-ornamented works so far and both turned out OK but this time there's a face and I'm a little bit scared of doing it wrong and making a mistake.

After I read Basia’s email I wrote in response:

The face is in top left panel, though the beard continues in bottom left. I think it turned out ok, but it was supposed to b on a bigger angle and the ear is too large. I sort of like how it looks a bit like something from ‘The Simpsons’.

When I conceptualised the painting I didn’t know it would turn out looking like a character from ‘The Simpsons’, I wonder who it might be, but I had put down the yellow and green obviously (Australia’s sporting colours) to get to this stage of uncertainty. 

I might’ve done a better job if I’d used Pencil first (and rubbed out the residue later) but the cartoonish aspect of the figure would’ve been different perhaps.

For the next work I did the execution differently, taking more time with the drawing BEFORE the painting, and mocking up the figure on two sheets of folded A4 to start with. The process evolves as I progress, coming up with solutions to technical problems as the idea settles in place and clicks.