My Creative Journey 31 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 7

For the first time in I don't know how many weeks I finally took a night off from my art stuff.

For some of you who follow my blog, I know it's hard to believe, but through a Herculean force of will I did it. I was tempted, let me tell you, hehe. I even threw up a poll on Instagram in a farfetched hope bunches of people would tell me to draw, but my friends there all said the same thing...'take a break.' A couple even messaged me, lol. I can't tell you how cool of a feeling that was...but, last night I got back to it. The time off gave me a second to breath, get some good rest, and refresh a lot of things, so I'll probably try and do it more often.

Remember how a couple days ago my paintings were hella lackluster because I wasn't focusing where my gut really wanted me to be...well, I went back to what I was 'supposed' to be doing. That was, is, inking stuff. These postcards are riding hard in my subconscious and I'm about to get started on them. Doing things specifically for other people has driven me to want to get even better. Up until now it's all been off the cuff whatever I wanted...and it still is... but I have this strong desire for people to like what I send them so my skills gotta be at least at the beginning of where I want them to be. And, I think I'm there.

I started off here.

On a previous post @redheadpei left a comment with a pic my painting reminded them of (thanks!). Which, strangely enough was exactly the image I was looking for...well, close. I ended up using a different but similar pic as my model. For those of you who have been to the funner parts of Southeast Asia...same-same, but different.

I started in the bottom right and drew clockwise from there, trying new/different things on each one. Like I usually do I tried to feel out the lines and how they all fell, to understand them at an almost visceral level. I probably should have spent some more time trying to do a direct copy, but, as usual I was impatient. They all look kind of spread out, like a mis-formed clay model, the right parts not pushed in and some of the wrong ones pulled out. I think this is just part of my learning process as my early skulls looked and felt the same way.

I kept with the mask concept as I moved on to my second page. This time I went a bit more free form, following some earlier seeds from other kinds of masks. I'm really not a huge fan of these. They feel kind of forced, and a bit mechanical. No real life to them. It's like I was trying to do something, but only half paying attention. I had an idea in my mind, but must have gotten distracted. I don't hate them, I just know they're small building blocks in the foundation. Practice, practice, practice.

But, in the bottom right the seed of a new idea was planted.

I don't think I'd used that brush before, or maybe I had, but not in the way that I did. I loved how the lines looked and felt, and decided to keep with that moving into the third page.

...definitely a radical switch. I flowed back into the skull theme, apparently with ease. What started as a simple black skulls using a style similar to that last drawing, I decided to build on that and play around with shading. Black is such a, well, dark color, and if not used judiciously shit can get real nasty, real fast. The next page illustrates that, but I'll get to that in a minute.

So, I wanted to still create shade, but move away from black, because, well, you know that shadows have varying tones of darkness.

I'd seen this kind of 'coloring' somewhere somewhen and so I had a general idea of what I wanted to do. Using a reference image to get an idea of how the shadows might play out, I started to coat on a thinned out version of the ink. I can't even tell you how much I'm beginning to love this stuff and I know I've only just scratched the surface of what can be done with it. My lines are still weak and unsure, but, in time they will get better. I still gotta find a mentor so they can help guide me in some directions...

But, that second layer of dark gray just wasn't enough. There were so many surfaces that I felt should have some sort of color to them, a lot of the mid-tone areas. I wanted to avoid the highlights because that's the point of working with white paper, at least in my opinion. The white creates a highlight in the absence of color/ink, and emphasizes everything around it by the virtue of having nothing there. Some lessons I learned a while back with my color paintings.

And then things took a bit of a downward turn, hehe.

It's not bad, but it's also not good. With this one I laid down a sketch first, to make sure I didn't explode it outside the borders like I've done with a lot of my work. Seems that when I do that, the technicals get better, but the life that comes from my natural strokes is kinda lessened. I'm sure I'll still put guide-points on my pieces on occasion but....we'll see.

I do have a video of this one if you care to see me draw it.

Music: Rich Sudney

I wanted to say 'fuck it' with this one.

Not in a frustrated, it didn't come out well, I hate this, kind of way. More of a, the last one didn't meet my standards kind of way, let's let loose for a second. So, of course it doesn't fit on the paper and it has some stupid word next to it, lol. I had a blast with this one, going off of just my memory of how the skull should look, still playing with those monochromatic tones. Color has corrupted me in so many ways, hehe. I'm just not satisfied with just one color anymore...or at least not in this medium. Lately I've felt that a work can always be more when you start playing around like this. Yes, there's going to be a lot of trial and error, but that's what this time is for.

It was getting late at this point...and like an idiot I still wanted to create more. I also had a bunch of ink in the well that needed to be used or it would be wasted...or at least that was my excuse.

So I made something that most people would never show...but here I am showing it. Utterly ridiculous, pointless, and confusing. But, it got rid of the ink, or at least most of it. I did have fun creating it and as I usually do with a piece I see is going to hell, I experimented. One thing I do want to note, on the technical end, start with the darkest color first and build up from there...at least that's what I think at this current level of understanding. On this one I started with a dark gray, and added black second, than progressively lighter.

It's been a crazy journey so far.

Lots of good, lots of bad, lots of frustration, lots of satisfaction. To be able to create things that I want to see on my walls, or would be envious of had I not done it myself...it's an awesome feeling. That's what the day of rest gave me, a bit of perspective. All that energy I usually throw into creating these pieces suddenly was free and without my bidding decided to give me some great business ideas for my work, which is awesome. Lots of convergence on a lot of things right now, so I'm excited for the next steps I plan to take. First one of them being to get out of this job by starting some other revenue streams.

Thanks for dropping by! As I always say, I really appreciate you dropping by to look, read, and hopefully comment. On those lonely nights and cold mornings they help to keep my fire burning. I'm going to try and get home a bit earlier today so that I can chill with my buddy a bit before getting to the second part of my day. No rest for the wicked and all that. I just hope all this is building to something, hehe.

Wessel

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Previous posts:
My Creative Journey 30 + Watch me Paint! Ep. 12
My Creative Journey 29 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 06
My Creative Journey 28
My Creative Journey 27
My Creative Journey 26 + Watch me Paint! Ep. 11
My Creative Journey 25 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 05
My Creative Journey 24 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 04
My Creative Journey 23 + Watch me Paint! Ep. 010
My Creative Journey 22
My Creative Journey 21 + Watch me Paint! Ep. 09
My Creative Journey 20 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 03
My Creative Journey 19 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 02
My Creative Journey 18 + Watch me Draw! Ep. 01
My Creative Journey 17
My Creative Journey 16
My Creative Journey 15 PT 2 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 08
My Creative Journey 14 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 07
My Creative Journey 13 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 06
My Creative Journey 12 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 05
My Creative Journey 11 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 04
My Creative Journey 10 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 03
My creative journey 9
My creative journey 8
My creative journey 7
My creative journey 6
My creative journey 5
My creative journey 4
My creative journey 3
My creative journey 2
My creative journey 1

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