🎨 Before KAWS’ bold colors and clean lines make it to the canvas, there’s a meticulous process rooted in his background in animation and visual design. Here’s how a KAWS painting comes to life: 1️⃣ It starts with a sketch. KAWS often begins with a simple silhouette—sometimes inspired by a pop culture reference and sometimes rooted in abstracted forms and lines sourced from animations. These elements aren’t meant to be obvious; they’re his private “entry point into the picture.” 2️⃣ Then comes the composition. KAWS reworks his drawings in Adobe Illustrator, fine-tuning each line. He layers together different elements like he’s developing a collage. 3️⃣ Mapping the color. Once the composition is sketched onto a canvas, KAWS sits in front of it to plan his color placements. KAWS plans every hue through a system of dots and handwritten color numbers, mapped onto what he calls a “color chart.” Each schematic sheet becomes part of his own color archive—a bindered catalog of every painti...