DAY 3/5 — WARM HONEY

Elena Gold
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

Today’s texture is “warm honey” provided by Dan. Dan described his day yesterday as feeling overheated, hot, foggy, slow-moving, hazy, and lethargic. To him, warm honey or “hot” honey, described the negative elements of his day, something painfully slow to move through, frustratingly even. When I went to make my own list though, I discovered that I thought of warm honey as the opposite. To me warm honey is thick, love-drunk, pleasantly warm, softened, glowing, buzzing, and relaxed. This was an exciting realization because thus far I haven’t had the chance to create a sketch in which I really disagreed with my friend’s definition.

Brainstorm

I decided that the animation needed to be slow, maybe painfully slow, to convey the frustration behind a slow-moving, lethargic day. I was hoping to try and create a sketch that felt suffocating too, something a little overwhelming. The color palette I chose all landed in the category of warm (or mostly warm) jewel-tones. The piece needed to feel rich, but also hot. In my initial sketch I also mapped out a series of ever-shrinking circles, spiraling into an endless pit. Simulating the monotony of an activity that is never-ending felt closer to Dan’s definition of the texture. I decided to dive into my sketch to see what I could do with the concentric circle idea.

Attempt 1

I realized the circles definitely needed to be shrinking in radius to create the never ending spiral effect. I also didn’t love the look of the plain hard-edged circle, so, like I learned from my day 2 5-in-5, I added the dilation filter to see how it would transform the piece.

Attempt 2

I really liked the way this came out but, in the context of honey, it didn’t feel right. I decided to work on softening the tone of the piece (to create haziness), blending colors, and slowing everything down.

Attempt 3

Finally this sketch was starting to feel more like “warm honey”, but I realized it was also creeping closer to my definition of the texture, rather than Dan’s. The soft, haziness started to feel more like a comfortably pleasant numbness, and less irritatingly slow. I accidentally added the teal, and kind of liked it, but again didn’t really feel that it fit the texture.

Attempt 4

In this attempt I decided to experiment with moving away from the spiral. Although aesthetically I liked the way the swirl looked a bit like the milky way, I fought to move away from anything that felt un-honey-like (which was hard!!). I decided to move back to the spiral. To me, the spiral felt like attempts at moving or doing, that all ended up futile (spiraling down into the center point of the canvas). I also decided that I wanted to create an element of a dull hum beneath the “attempts” that the spiral represented. I envisioned the hum serving as the overheated, buzz that remained the undercurrent of the day (something that was ever-present).

(NOTE: In order to keep this gif under the 25mb limit, I had to cut the frame rate and adjust the color a little bit. The speed is also a little faster than it has originally rendered). The “buzz” that I had created as an underlay was working for me and I really liked the way it interacted with the elements rendered above it. The only thing that was no longer working for me was the way the spirals now rendered looking like fairy lights. This made the piece feel a little more whimsical than I wanted.

Attempt 6

I ended up feeling really happy about the way this turned out! The movement of the spiral felt slow, even, and thick (like my definition of the texture) but remained a little foggy, overheated, and lethargic as Dan had described. Each spiral pattern felt “doomed” in a way that that matched with what Dan had described to me, also. I also like the way the piece still maintained this inebriated, warm glow that I really wanted to preserve. Imagining movement through honey initially conjured this perfect image of stumbling around in the city on a warm, summer night, and I’m glad some elements of the piece still felt that way.

A still from the final piece
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