Are we waiting at the station or staring out the window as the world rolls by along the route to an undefined destination? Sometimes creativity can feel like a limbo of sorts, that consistently fluctuates to maintain our position in the middle.
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One rainy afternoon in high school, I rode the bus home and a guy in my year handed me a cassette. It was Soundgarden's Superunknown; "you wanna buy that from me?" he asked, but I wasn't sure so borrowed it to have a listen. Of course I knew who Soundgarden were, but this was the first I'd seen of their new album and I was a kid in school with no money.
Sleep is setting in as I fumble together this post at the last possible minute. As you can tell from an obvious lack, it's been another week of distractions and amusements that left the blog on the back burner. So let's get small and talk about the encouraging outcomes of experimentation within limitations, because… zzz.
This one is all about the crappy doodles...
It never ceases to amaze me just how much we rely on interpretation and assumption to gauge our place in the world. Often we attempt to attach meaning to the mundane, despite the subjective nature of experience. Yet we dare to draw on experience for inspiration when we can hardly trust our own reality at the best of times. There must be a way to test the boundaries of the universe and come to a shared knowledge for universal interaction.
I was going to just post a follow up to the pose practice I started doing with Clip Studio Paint, but after finishing off that particular drawing I didn't have a lot to say about it. However, it struck me that often when I'm practicing techniques or learning software, I never actually finish anything one hundred percent. I have a whole lot of "could be better" pieces that will never be taken further, so let's talk about why instead.
Another busy week gone by with only a few morsels to show for it, so let's keep this short and sweet. I'm working on a few things here and there, so will post about anything that happens when it does. For now though, let's stick to a couple of drawings and look ahead at what's around the corner.
I'm at a bit of a loss when thinking about a theme for this week's post, as it's been a long and busy week. At the same time I've had a fairly pleasurable week on account of picking up some new music, which I find always inspires creativity. So maybe that's something to talk about…
I recently had the opportunity to work on creating some lenticular prints for a client, which turned out to be an interesting undertaking. Until recently, I didn't even know what a lenticular print was, so I thought it fitting to write a post-mortem of sorts about learning on the job and making things with your hands.
I've been thinking a lot about goals this week. Previously these posts have been a bit nonsensical and lacking direction, so I'll attempt to be a bit more focused here. As a relatively disorganised person, I often find that making lists and setting goals is a good way to get everything straight and simplify what lies ahead.
Interpretations are a funny thing, and something that comes up all the time when I'm thinking about art. I've talked about it a bit before, but lately I've been considering how frightening it can be at times to offer up a fragile idea that may be misinterpreted by another.
Nonsense is a pretty common theme in life at the best of times. As humans there are a lot of behaviours and norms that can always be attributed to nonsense, on account of there being little reasoning behind most of what we do. Of course there's fabricated reasoning if you look at absolute universal truths and it's entirely subjective to what you believe, but even this subjectivity could be seen as lacking in sense.
Robots are cool.
I've always loved sci-fi and stories that explore the future of humanity, because despite the incredible advances of the 20th century, we still have so far to go.
Whenever I'm trying out digital art software, most of what I'm looking for is a quick and easy way to create something I couldn't otherwise tackle with brushes and pencils. Strange then that one of my favourite applications is ArtRage, which does all it can to replicate traditional media in a digital form. However, it manages to offer all the benefits of digital art, while maintaining a decent representation of pens, pencils, paints, and pastels… to mention a few.
There are always a few key elements of any day that can spark an idea. It could be as vague as a feeling or a concept; or sometimes a complete and detailed image will unveil itself from somewhere within. This week it's been music that inspired a couple of doodles from song names I hadn't heard in a long time.
I'd like to say that I'm posting this late on purpose, but the truth is that time got away from me this week. However, there's always a silver lining, so let's take this opportunity to talk about time itself and how it plays a part in the process.
There are things that I always wish I took more time to do, and regularly drawing something/anything is right at the top of the list. There's that theory that to be any good at anything you first need to spend a lot of time doing it, so I'm making more of an effort to draw regularly.
Clip Studio Paint is a newer version of what used to be Manga Studio; a drawing package direct from Japan that focuses on Manga illustration and authouring. I'm not sure why they decided to change their name, but if I had to guess it would be to market themselves as more than just a Manga creator, but it's basically the same program it always was.
Creativity is a hard thing to make a living from and while I have been fortunate enough to earn some sort of an income designing graphics and web sites, there are other areas of interest that rarely get a look in. I still have a lot to learn and a lot of practice to put in, which will ultimately be the content of this art blog.