My Creative Journey 40

There are moments where you just want to get in your car and drive somewhere far away and hopefully fall into a better situation with better people. I just had one of those so forgive me if this post is a bit shorter than normal. Friday when I created these I was a bit wrecked as well, having just finished my last day of working that part time job. But, the show must go on and I've got a couple of these to do today since I took yesterday off and chilled with friends. Took off from writing, but not from painting. That's a story for the next post, hehe.

Here's where I started. Nothing too crazy. Done from memory.

I wasn't so stoked about the skull, which was okay, so I decided to play with the background. In many cases what the center-piece is surrounded by can be as important as the main focus. I believe the technical term is composition? Hehe. How everything works together. Lots of the time my images blast out over the entire page so there's no room for anything else, but, I'm trying to be versatile. It's important to be able to fit within the lines, especially if I'm trying to turn these into things that can be mounted, sold, reproduced, etc..

Then I decided to take an entirely different tack.

As I've been saying for the last week or so, I'm planning to move on to some new stuff soon. This inking was my first foray in that direction. I've done this mask before in a couple different forms so far...marker, pen, and now straight ink with brush. It's a good rough approximation. At some point I'm really going to have to start dropping time into my pieces to bring them to the level I know they can be, versus just pumping them out. The pressure of always having to create something cool to look at, as well as improving my skills, it's getting more and more interesting for me. Quantity which will improve overall skills quicker, or quality, which will help work specific skills?

They say the devil is in the details, so, we'll see where my internal and infernal debate ends up, hehe.

And this is where I ended up.

I wanted to focus on what I was good at for a minute, which is the center part of the face. My jaw lines and overall skull shape is still pretty weak, I think it might have something to do with understanding the perspective of how the skull is sitting, and how the different parts jut out at different places. I have a good basic idea of what's up, but, as always, still miles to go overall.

It's a crazy comparison when you put some of the first skulls I drew on cards to the ones I'm drawing now. Last night I was going to do a bunch of scans of my postcards but unfortunately the scanner I was going to use didn't have the resolution I needed so y'all have to wait on that post, hehe. I could use the phone pics I usually take, but those just don't look as good. Today I might head to Staples or something and see if they could do better. I could buy a scanner, but with a move coming up, I gotta conserve funds when I know there's cheaper ways to get things done. I made the mistake of overspending last time I had cash...not gonna do it again.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my work. There's more coming, as always, so stay tuned. Last night got crazy. I made a challenge for myself, and completed it :) Hope y'all are having a great weekend!

Wessel