Easy Does It + Thoughts on Screenwriting, 9/1 + 9/2/2025
September 1st + 2nd, 2025
Had a couple of short studio days today and yesterday! Yesterday was Labor Day and Sam was off, so we spent most of it hanging out at a neighborhood street fair and then watching The Summer I Turned Pretty. Amazing show, by the way. Today I just don’t have a lot of time because I need to be home for an A/C repairman at 1, and I didn’t get here until about 10.
Still, it’s pretty exciting to see how much progress can really be made in small amounts of time. Both yesterday and today I spent only about 1 and a half—2 hours in the studio, yet in just those two short sessions I feel like I’ve made significant headway on a painting which I’ve been working on for months. In the past I used to wait around to get started on anything until I had a 4-8 hour long chunk of time to work with. As you can imagine, that resulted in a lot less progress, and very few days when I actually got any work done. Now I just take whatever time I can get and it feels like my projects are developing all day long every day. As long as I touch the project once a day for at least a few minutes, the ideas start percolating and eventually bubble up to the top. Then they drip-drop out onto the page, the canvas, whatever, slowly and surely. It’s always worth it to come into the studio, even if I’ll only have half an hour to work.
Yesterday I came in around 10 am and did my daily Frog Ephemera writing practice. Making it up as I go along as been going just as smoothly as it did when I was transcribing old material. And it’s fun to come up with dialogue quickly. I can see how the characters might soon take on a mind of their own. The screenplay format is so interesting + challenging to work with, especially when I have an animated picture in mind. There’s a lot of transcribing of visual ideas. Also, in a written screenplay dialogue really takes center stage. Literally, the format requires it to always be centered, so it really stands out visually. I guess this is for the actors, but it serves an interesting purpose for the writer too. Although I’ve always thought dialogue was one of my weaknesses, I find myself feeling inclined to include more of it in the script than I might think to in a comic because of the bold look it has on the page. It’s satisfying to try to work on the script in a poetic sense, concerned about the arrangement of words on the page, the images evoked by my specific choices of words and where those words are placed. The order of images is interesting to think about too. I have always felt that the medium of film has a particular affinity to poetry.
That’s something I was thinking about the other day in terms of animation. I watched Disney’s 1940 feature Pinnocchio the other day and besides being astounded by the visuals I was really intrigued by the movement of the story. Yes, it is clearly a moral tale, a fable, maybe, with a plot which moves the characters along towards learning a lesson. As a result the plot is rather thin, and so is the dialogue. But I think there’s a lot to be read into the images in themselves. Each still frame is a beautiful, perfectly executed painting, and can be read as such, independently of the plot being enacted. You could even read them symbolically, like a tarot. So that the plot is simply a structure for the images to follow, and the dialogue a sort of stylistic flourish. The hand-painted animation, fable-like plot and vague dialogue work together in quite a poetic way to create an overall ‘image’ of the finished film, which leaves quite a strong impression. I think that animated features really have to move the viewer along in a different way than live action ones. Forgive my weak analysis here, but I don’t feel like writing a book. Just take my word for it– you should all watch Pinnocchio and tell me what you think.
Anyway back to my studio activities. Both yesterday and today, after wrapping up my 15 min writing practice, I went straight into painting. Yesterday I kept chipping away at the staircase in the same painting I wrote about on Sunday. I felt pretty stuck so I didn’t get far. I am really getting frustrated with the rubbery acrylic gesso surface I have on this canvas. It absorbs the paint so much and makes it difficult to push around. It also repels the really thin oily glaze layers I’ve been trying to put on– they keep beading up like watercolor would. After I finish the three canvasses I’ve already primed with it, I think I’m done at least with this particular brand of acrylic gesso. It may just be a shitty one. I’ll have to figure out some other kind of solution.
Despite my frustrations with the surface, I made some progress on the picture. The first thing I did was mix up a really dark shadow color and start trying to add some dimension to window and doorframes in the painting. I also added in a shadow in the foreground for the backlit figure standing in the doorway. That image of a backlit figure in a doorway casting a long shadow was where this painting began, actually. I was inspired by Grant Wood’s “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”, which is on view in the Met. I really wanted to try that unusual lighting effect you see coming from the houses here:
Looking back at that painting, I also blocked in some light reflections from the windows in my picture. The foreground needs a lot of development. Last thing I did on this painting today was sketch in a third figure sitting at the dining table. Originally I intended this painting to have just one lone figure, but it’s been taking on a life of its own. Every time I think I’ve got the composition resolved something else wants to pop in and take up space. Well, that’s the magic of making an image from scratch. I just can’t wait to start something on a differently textured canvas…
That’s four hours total, today and yesterday combined. Here’s a recap of what happened in the studio for the past two days:
Worked on Frog Ephemera script. Enjoyed working with the screenplay format.
Added some dimension, lighting effects, and a sketchy new figure to red house painting. This painting needs some kind of working title…
–Finn
