My Creative Journey 22

Every journey begins with a step...and continues with countless more. There is no end to the creative path. Only progress. To get better you have to do. Your skills, your mind, your art will not get better unless you try. And trying means you will fail a lot. But, if you keep at it, eventually you will triumph, break through, and be where you want to be. Here is another step on my journey.

Gonna be honest, I'm really tired today. For the first time in a long time it was my alarm that woke me up, not just naturally arising at the right time. The whole weekend was just filled with things. From staying up until 3am playing with ink on Saturday, to shooting some stuff for a bar that lasted until 3am on Sunday, to painting until 1230am this morning before waking up and running to my job.

Yesterday I was supposed to relax but I had too much to catch up on and get done.

Having a part time is nice...it means cash inflow, but it also means less time and freedom to do what I need. Which means I have to focus more and make more use of my time...which, for the time being, will mean less free time. Sleep if for the dead anyways.

And, as for yesterdays painting...damn. Like, I'm not a huge fan of the outcome, but the whole process was probably the most educational I've had in a very long time...and most days usually have a couple lessons. Since I picked up color on Saturday my world has been rocked, hardcore. Going from monochromatic to tones...I thought the possibilities were endless before...but, fuck. Well, let's get to what I painted yesterday.

So, yesterday I decided to paint some skulls. Why skulls? Because faces rest on them, hehe. I figured it would be good to be really familiar with them so that I can get better at the portrait style stuff I love to do so much. Also, they look pretty cool.

This first piece was a real big tester.

Yesterday afternoon, between all the computer related stuff I had to do I ran over to the arts supplies store to grab some red. There's a couple reasons why...well, several. When I posted the pic of all the art supplies the donated money bought an art buddy of mine was like...

'Hey Mike, where's the red?'

To which I responded,

'Next trip, when I have more donations.'

And just a little later another donation came in, not from that friend, but from another.

But, I also decided to grab some red because as I was finishing my first night of color painting I looked at one of the pieces and said to myself...'this could really use red.'

The skull itself was really rough, my compositing kinda sucked so the whole thing didn't fit, but I am proud that I got the shape right...and the general feel. For me, in my painting and drawing, how I feel has been very important. When I imagine the lines, when I work the lines with my brush or pen, there's something very visceral in the way I imagine it. It's not just the technical, stuff like spacing, diagramming, or whatnot, I actually feel like I'm drawing along the face as I make my strokes. Weird, I know. Like, yesterday when my buddy was showing me how a tutorial taught him how to draw faces for comic books...it made sense, but it just didn't feel right. I know I'm probably going to practice it anyways, because skills are skills and I want more, but, we'll see how I actually involve that technique in the process.

I messed around a lot with this image, not being too concerned with where it was going, but paying more attention to the techniques I'm trying to develop. Right now there's so much information that's flooding into my head as I do that to worry too much about what it's going to finish up like will definitely fuck me up. I'll talk more about that with a different piece.

On that note, let's more to the next one.

This piece was a series of WTF moments, starting with the border. I had imagined a piece with this caution tape, not this particular one, but, when I put the paper down I figured it would be fun to try right away. I mean, what's the worst that could happen, hehe. Go with the flow, follow the gut. Like when I painted those thick black borders on my earlier pieces, it was an experiment of putting boundaries on. I still manager to mess up the composition, but, whatever. What's the saying? 'Find perfection in imperfection? Or something silly like that? :)

I like this one because it's a radical evolution.

It pulls from my work with just the black and craft paper, to throwing in another element (the caution tape), with red paint the cherry on top. Now, for many reasons I feel I fucked up the last painting when it came to the red. I got too excited. Way too excited. I mean, new color on the first painting of the day kind of excited, hehe. I have to admit, when I first started putting down the red on this one, there was a moment where I thought I was doing a very stupid thing. So, of course I continued. Not like you can back out with paint, so you just kinda gotta go with it. For better or worse...which I'll come back to on another painting.

While it's kind of hard to tell with this image, being a small picture and all, is the presence it has. Now, I know that sounds strange, but, if you've ever seen a pic of a piece of art, then seen it in real life, you'll know what I mean. Step back 6 or 7ft from this and have the lights right, and the red has quite an evil glow to it. And, combined with the finger painting I did for the skull, with it's smudged, almost sooty lines, quite cool.

But, that's just my opinion :)

So, to the next evolution of the evening.

This one I'm really proud of.

Not because of how it turned out, but because of the evolutions I went through while painting it. The largest of those evolutions having to do with layering and blending paint. Now, I get it's hard to see the skull, my highlight to shadow transition, as well as the placement of those, still sucks, but, it's there. I really got into this one with the blending, especially the grays.

In my head I'm always trying to think of how to bring all the elements together to jump out...and, I think with this one I kinda got scared and tried to go more traditional towards the end. An understandable mental mistake this early in the game. Always asking, 'do I be me?' or 'do I do what people will understand?' Which is not to be confused with being lazy and not learning how to actually do something. Remember, imitation until you get to creation, unless inspiration strikes...

But, like I said, I'm really proud of it.

If you look at the four paintings you'll see an evolution of sorts, stretching in different directions and trying new things. Something you should never stop doing because each time you'll learn something new. Sometimes it's useful stuff, sometimes it's not. But, always something. And, if in the end it turns out like crap, guess what? You still got all the lessons out of it.

Which brings me to my fourth piece...my biggest lesson, the one I've referred to twice so far in the post.

I both live this one and hate it. There is no balance, and how I feel changes moment to moment. But, what won't change is all I learned from it.

The early states were awesome.

I was smart, sketched out the skull first so it would be the right size. My first layer of blue went down sick. I was excited. My inspiration was the images I had painted the previous night. Bold, strong colors, and that blue was right in line.

So, then I decided to lay down some gray. Get some naturals going. I got a bit excited, might have painted too much. It was at this point I learned one of the first major lessons, at least for the style I was trying to do. White space. Leave white space. White is an accent, white is the void, white brings the eye in to a mix of colors. White is what can give colors even more power by the lack of others being around it.

This little nail of knowledge was pounded into my head as I headed into the next stage, which was black for shadows. My order of operations I wanted to try was outline, natural surfaces, shadow, then highlight. I got zealous with the shadows. Very zealous, and so my paints began to overlap more and more. I didn't panic, I didn't scream in frustration as what I thought was a dope piece got messed up bit by bit, I just rolled with it. Something I reinforced for myself with the inscription in the bottom right. If I would have had enough white space along the right side, I might have written 'Practice makes perfect' in black, hehe. But, I did have a blast playing with the borders, making the edges feel the way they do.

Gonna be honest...by the time I got to yellow for the highlights I was almost ready to say, 'fuck it.' But, I wanted to practice what I preach and keep on going anyways. Every lesson a block in my foundation and all that jazz. I tried to get the yellow to highlight, but, by this point the image was too heavy. And by too heavy, I mean there was just too much paint. Light on dark with this paper and acrylics I'm using...it just don't work well. And, without the white space to give this lighter color space to be bold...things were doomed from the moment I put brush to paper. But, it's all good. I decided to mess with blending again and pulled out the most reliable of tools...my hands. I slopped stuff around, 'blended,' and basically went nuts playing around.

Since shit was messed up anyways I decided to throw some white on top, just to try and balance the white

...even if it was hopeless. Because, what's the worst that could happen at this point? I learn something new? :)

I finished this last piece around 12:30am...and then proceeded to relax for an hour before heading to bed. Overall I was happy with the day and what had happened. Looking back at this post it seems I've written quite a few words. Most people will probably scroll through and just look at the pics, but that's cool. The writing is for me anyways. Now I've documented my lessons so they'll be more solid in my head.

Which is another lesson for anyone who wants to learn something should, well, learn. Write down your observations. Document your progress. Pay attention to what you do. Don't let stuff just fly by and hope it'll get better just because you're doing.

Thanks for stopping by and reading/looking. Sorry I didn't have a time-lapse today. I tried to record one last night for that final piece but the segments got too long. I might end up buying a mini-SD card so I have the space for what I want to do. It's not fair to y'all that I'm too lazy to go spend $10 on a memory card, hehe. Maybe tonight :)

Wessel

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