Pointillism, COVID, and Call Me By Your Name: a 100 hour fan art-piece.

16in x 12in pointillism piece / a scene from Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name

Cabin-Fever, and the Urge to Make.

Back in 2020 when the world shut down, our tattoo studio was closed for 9 months. I was still in Oxfordshire at that point, and we had a grand total of three lock-downs… March - July; November; and then the end of December through to April ‘21.

It gave me more time off than I knew what to do with, but I had such grand plans! I was going to learn to speak Italian and French, get back into yoga and regular work-outs, and I was going to make art for myself again! Something I have not done for a very, very long time. That’s the thing about making your hobby your job. It becomes less about enjoyment, and more about what you can sell. Tragic, really.

Anyway, those plans failed catastrophically, because I got really bloody depressed. Like, really, really bloody depressed. But towards the end of the first lock-down, I decided I was going to Make Something to distract me from the marrow-deep anxiety I was feeling about going back to work, returning to the real world, and holding conversations with strangers when I hadn’t talked to anybody apart from my parents for four months…

Me, normal about something? Never.

One thing to know about me is that I am not a casual enjoyer. I have never in my life consumed media normally, and if I like something, then it is my entire personality. And for the duration of the plague, I was obsessed with André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name. I read the book by a thousand times over, and I knew (still know) the film word-for-word. It has its problems, and people have Opinions on it, and that, I understand. But at that point in my life it had me in a choke-hold, and it got me through something dreadful. But isn’t that always the way? Where would we be, as people, without fandom spaces? So upon my decision to Create, there was only going to be one theme.

I’m still not entirely sure why I thought pointillism was the way to soothe my ills, because it’s the most time-consuming, annoying process in the world (in my opinion) and it drove me even more loopy than I was to begin with. But it sure did keep me occupied!

It began where everything does: a really shit sketch (see above). I had the scene on my laptop as a reference, and I just drew what I saw. Nice and easy!

And then the dots began.

That picture there, to the right, is what the whole damn thing looks like. That’s all of it. Ten thousand trillion dots (no hyperbole, probably), making up a pretty piece of fan-art.

I would love to say that I have more progress photos, but I don’t, because I suck. And by the time I was done with Elio’s arm, I was ready to tear it into a thousand pieces and pretend I’d never started. (Am I dramatic, and easily irritated? Yes.)

A Glutton for Punishment.

Call it perseverance (or masochism), I didn’t give up. I completed it, mate.

And now that I’ve recovered from the actual blinding trauma of doing nothing but gently stabbing paper with a micron for 100 hours, I love it! It’s on the wall in my booth in the studio, so if you want to see it in real life, come get tattooed by me in Newton. See if you can count how many dots there are.

Tell me: what kept you going during the weirdest time to be alive?