If you’ve been to a Ty Meier art show you’ve probably seen his very large 3’x4’ “Damn Big Doodle’, a 100 hour artwork centerpiece he drew two years ago, but before he created that epic project he tested the materials he was going to use with this quick stream-of-consciousness artwork called ‘Moon chases Sun’. Interestingly, this artwork, in some ways was as or more successful then the Damn Big Doodle: several prints sell at every show, and two strong images came out of it, the hedgehog playing guitar to the snail (called ‘Any Gig you can get’) and the Raven with the flower garland. Both became stickers, greeting cards and crowd favorites in their own right.
Ty used a pencil on 100% cotton hot press watercolor paper to draw this image (and all the rest of his images) and then inked it with an acrylic paint marker, which is waterproof and permanent. He colored it with thinly pigmented watercolor paint because that’s transparent and lets the black of the ink through. He jokes that Copec alcohol markers would be better but those are $7.99 each, run out in the middle of artworks, and come in only bright lollipop colors while a good tray of watercolor paints will last forty artworks. Lastly he’ll highlight the artwork with heavy-body acrylic paint because it’s opaque and thick. He uses ‘rigger’ brushes which are thin and sign-painterly, and thinks of it as drawing though it’s really painting.
This print was glued and pressed to an 8”x10” art board. Ty brushed over the details with a clear glossy acrylic paint to give it some texture and depth, and then lacquered it heavily to make it glow.
