My Creative Journey 29 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 06

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.

Rage and passion are so closely linked I can't even begin to describe it. Like love and hate, there's a fine line between the two. Every day, and more so lately, I dance back and forth between the two. The doubt, the confidence. The love, the hate. The frustration, the satisfaction. I wish there was less hyperbole in my world and more stability, but, alas, I do not think that was the lot I drew in this life. Some of that kind of came out when I was chatting with my sister over the phone for her birthday and Mothers day yesterday.

Now, don't get me wrong, my family has always been behind me and supported my artistic endeavors, but I know what they're thinking. It's because I've seen this movie before.

I think everyone has. It's a common one. While most people have their careers, their jobs, their decently steady lives, I've pretty much said 'fuck that,' and done my own thing. Sometimes things have worked out, sometimes not. Mostly not...until now.

I am that crazy uncle. The question mark of the family. The one everyone wonders what will happen to. It's a weird position to be in. I watch almost everyone I know hit their singles and round the bases calmly, while I aim for the fences on every swing. I know I'll either hit one out of the park, or retire in ignominy. -ignominy unknown, uncared for

But, all that aside. Let's take a look what I created yesterday :) Being a Sunday I had more time than usually...and I even took a break! Crazy, I know. I still drew and inked...kinda of a lot, lol.

As you can tell I've been working on skulls a bit.

A lot of these are from memory vs a picture, which I think is pretty cool. A useful skill when you're riding trains heading somewhere with nothing to do but draw and don't want to get out your phone, hehe. I think two of these I drew at the coffee shop, one was on the train, and one was before I got my new 16oz bottle of ink out to play. Nothing too crazy to say about these. Just practice, practice, practice. A good demonstration of how applying yourself to a specific task can show results if you keep it up :)

I also played a little more with masks.

Nothing crazy awesome, but, progress. All of these came from my own head using the framework of gas masks that I've been building up. There's also an edge of the skulls in there somewhere. Remember how I said drawing lots of skulls would let me get familiar with how faces work? Well, it's very true, hehe. Everything is a building block, no matter how small or stupid you think it might be.

These drawings started to give me the inkling of different characters I could create, should I decide to do some more comic related or character related stuff.

It also reminded me that I need to get back to working on bodies because, after all, eventually these cool looking heads might need to match up with the lower halves, hehe.

After 5 pages of sketching I figured it was time to get into that new bottle of ink.

I did a lot of playing on this page. My first was the large skull on the bottom right. You can tell I haven't used brush and ink for a minute...so much off about it. But, moving left to the next big skull I got into the groove pretty quick. The three on the top were a bunch of fun as I decided to experiment with quick , almost interpretive expressions of what I'd been practicing. I'm always seeking the impactful, the iconic, so if I can figure how to draw the skull in my own way yet still keep it recognizable, that will be awesome. I'm also working on how to shrink my work down so I can fit it on 4x6 postcards, hehe.

With this next sheet I decided to play with masks again, I think mostly because one of my favorite paintings was sitting at the edge of my peripheral vision and since it's a mask and I want to do more of that better...hehe. If I can draw an amazing mask with the energy and color of the first one...it should be pretty cool. And, I'm still on the edge whether or not to make my first postcard series skulls or masks or something completely random.

If you want to see me lay this ink down...guess what? Here's Ep. 06 of Watch me Draw!

Music: Lobo Loco