I'm Picking Out A Thermos For You

I have shared before (here and here) that art-making is my love language. This week I have another example of this to share with you:

One of my partners, Seth, has fairly recently moved into a new place. At some point when I was over, he told me that he would like to get more art for the apartment, but doesn't really know where to start or even what he likes. Challenge accepted.

For his birthday, I decided to paint something for him. I wanted it to be weird (Seth likes weird) and I wanted it to be something that would be special between us.

On our first date, he pitched the idea that my sister and I feature the movie The Jerk on our podcast, Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t. About five months later, after watching the film with him, Emily and I recorded The Jerk: Deep Thoughts About Race, Comedy Genius, and the Unparalleled Thrill of Getting Your Name in the Phone Book, so I wanted to do something related to the film.

I fairly quickly decided to paint a thermos, based on the song Steve Martin's Navin sings to Bernadette Peters' Marie. The thermos becomes a symbol for their love that resurfaces later in the film.

I imagined an image with sharp graphic lines. I wanted it to almost feel like a silkscreen. And maybe it could be slightly off-register (i.e. the lines don't all match up--as if one of the layers in the printing process was not quite aligned). The tattoos of this guy I follow on Instagram came to mind. I wanted it to be something that, if you know The Jerk, you'd think, "hey, that's pretty cool" and if you don't know the movie, you'd think "what in the heck?"

I got to work.

I decided to use wall paint as my medium -- I figured it would make it more graphic and mimic the silkscreen look I was going for. I wanted a yellow background, like the movie poster for the Jerk. The other colors would be red, white, and black. I bought a pre-gessoed canvas at 18 x 24 with a gallery wrap so that he wouldn't need to frame it to hang it. I googled thermos images.

I started sketching.

Initially I thought I wanted an angled orientation, but then I found a model that had the thermos sitting on the ground, and that one felt right.

I figured out the measurements, and I got to work.

It turns out that working off-register when painting is harder for me to do than I thought it would be, but I enjoyed thinking through the layers. Once the thermos was more-or-less where I wanted it, I added some text to the negative space on the right side.

I finished it just in time and gave it to him for his birthday.

Later that week, we were talking about a couple he once knew and the elaborate dates she planned for them. "Sounds like a lot of work," I said, shaking my head.

"Wasn't painting me a thermos a lot of work?" Seth asked.

And yeah, I guess it was. But it didn't feel like work, because I was enjoying it; because I wanted to see what I could do; because I was invested in the idea I wanted to see to its conclusion. It was a helpful reminder.

And a cool painting.