About art exhibition project

Hi guys, I'm terribly sorry for being such a ghost for weeks. I feel such a shame, especially in front of new folks who just subscribed expecting something good from me and probably got so much disappointed. I pretty much hit the bottom of unproductivity making only 3 artwork in a month. But in fact, I was actually working very hard, it's just not drawings. As I mentioned in my last post, I got a chance to show a furry artwork on a real art exhibition and got busy working on a big project. But the whole process turned out much more complex and took much more time than I expected and my plans went pretty much out of hand. I tried to keep up with two things at once but it's very hard for my brain to switch between two processes, every day I was saying to myself "Okay, first half of the day is for exhibition project, second half is for commission" but as a result it was always ending with me doing only the first thing and having almost no time and energy left to do the second. I wanted to give you an update after finishing next commission but it took me days and days and days. 

So, now it's finally the time to tell you what made me so terribly busy. Exhibition curator who launched a big art project in our town loved my furry porn, she said that loving cartoon characters so deeply is quite an interesting concept which fits the idea of upcoming exhibition dedicated to pop-art and surrealism which will be opened in June. The whole essence of her project is to make 6 exhibitions in 6 months from March to July dedicated to different art movements of the 20th century and exhibit different artworks of our town's underground artists according to these movements. There already were exhibitions of fauvism, expressionism and abstractionism, two of them had my old works which I made in a far past before becoming a furry. One month ago curator took a private interview from me, I told her about my life and mentioned my current life period a bit. She got curious and asked to send her some examples and so I did. As I said, she liked the idea, said it's very close to pop-art concept and that she wants me to create something like this for upcoming exhibition, she will cover all the material expenses. The only condition is that she can't allow 18+ content on her exhibition so I should make something sfw and not erotic but it's absolutely fine with me. 

Idea hit my head immediately. I was thinking about my own OC which should personify my love for 80-90s aesthetics, Memphis style and cartoons of these decades for a long time. He was supposed to be like something from early CGI 3D animation or old 3D game so I thought his first depiction will be made when I get back to working in Blender again but this exhibition boosted the things. He is the blue dog guy in upper right corner of the first picture. I wanted to make his portrait with different decorative materials, a couple weeks ago I sketched him for the first time and got too excited making whole 6 characters instead of one. For a person who never had any OCs besides my abandoned fursona it's quite a sudden and big breakthrough. Not to mention the fact it was the first time I did such a simple styled work after doing only classic realism all the time, it was a very exciting experience.
The whole goal for me was to create characters with the most sexy design ever, at least for my own taste. Characters with features which I find the most handsome, cool guys with sharp style, bright color palettes, goofy faces and big snouts. Something I WISH I could see in cartoons but I don't see so I have to make it myself.

The first character which started everything (blue dog) is the only one which had his own name, I called him Zed Vector. it's a cheesy wordplay which fits the style of his decade. Since Zed Vector is more a digital being I picked terms such as Z axis and vector line and made it sound rad. Only few days ago I decided to call dalmatian guy Mark Spothound, you know, mark is both the name and marks, like spots, and Spothound refers to his dalmatian spots, also sounds good like both second name and a dog breed as there's many of them ending with hound. He became my second favorite after Zed, I feel pretty much horny for him and definitely going to work with him more in future. Other guys have no names since they were born more from just random thinking about perfect combinations of shapes and colors so I don't have any backstory for them, even no names, only this blue guy has a name Zed Vector and only yesterday I decided to call dalmatian dog Mark Spothound but I think I put more thought in other guys in future too.

But drawing it digitally is one thing, it took me just a bit more than one hour. Making it a physical piece was waaay waaaay harder. I made a lot of photos throughout the process and can describe it in details. 

1. First, I traced images from the screen to A3 sheets, leaving only cut lines without details which I had to make flat, like textures, mouths, nostrils and so on. 

2. I traced everything again from A3 to A3 but now I outlined every element separately and marked them all to not get confused (letters for the number of character and digits for the number of layer.

3. I carefully cut all the elements with knife and used them to transfer all the elements to pvc plastic sheets. 

4. Cutting everything of plastic sheets was one of the hardest stages and probably the most physically exhausting art process in my life. It's just a bit easier than cutting wood with knife, I even had headaches from putting too much pressure and having my whole body tense for hours. 

5. When everything was finally cut there was a looong stage of painting everything. Well, at least it's not as much physically hard as cutting. Mixing acrylic paints  trying to make them match digital colors perfectly is such a torture, I will never do it again, if I ever make another decorative piece I'll just follow my artistic feelings and do colors approximately. 

6. Then I had to cut all the flat details from the thin paper previously painted from the other side in needed color to make all these background patterns, mouths, eyes and so on, pictures show it. 

So, that's all, 6 stages which sound simple but they took days and days of work. It's like every character equals to one drawing so it can be said I made 9 artworks this month including drawings. Even such seemingly simple stage as buying materials needed me running billion times through my town to get everything, it took dozens of hours and plenty of energy. Right now I have everything disassembled to cover every part with several layers of yacht varnish. I use gloss acrylic but varnish is still important as it has UV filter which protects the paint from fading and also makes everything smoother giving surface a glass look instead of awful brush stroke relief. I can say that 80% of the work is already done but don't forget I also need to make a background for it. 

I'm sorry again, I know people are here mainly for porn and no matter how cool this work can look it's still not an excuse for such a downfall of productivity in my main art business but it's very hard to do two things at once. Deadline is a very unpleasant thing, if it wasn't that exhibition date I'd make long breaks giving one whole day for special art and one day for drawing classic porn but circumstances make me rush, I hope I won't experience the same again because I prefer stability, especially when it comes to my content here. 

I'll give you more updates when the work will be done and get hanged in exhibition hall, providing you with all the news.