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Jan. 7th, 2015 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfIn your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks. Does your process change depending on the type of creating you're doing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Let's see.
Years ago I read through Figure Drawing Without a Model, which suggested that arty types could take a small sketchpad everywhere to draw from life. Somehow when I put this into practice this migrated into "take a 3.5" x 5" sketchpad everywhere and draw people who look interesting, and thumbnails of what you might want to develop while not on public transit/dead tired/looking at stuff online/at work." The more experienced I get, the more I wind up thumbnailing things. Even if this doesn't generate a variety of staging or details, it's comforting to have something to work with - I'm not starting completely cold hoping to build something awesome.
Actual tools for art-making vary with mood and whatever I've been thinking about. My present choice of pencils are Col-Erase Carmine Red and Light Blue, though I'll use 2H, H and F pencils too - basically what I'm after is something dark enough to be easily visible, soft enough to mostly avoid my bad habit of trying to etch lines deep into the paper, and easy to erase. My current favorite pens are Staedler Pigment liners - I'm still unsure whether I should/whether I'd prefer to work in brush inks. Even though I'll use marker sometimes, most of my coloring is done with a hand-down copy of Photoshop, using a hand-down Intuos tablet (a recent present, previously I'd been using a tiny Wacom Bamboo which was pretty good - the Intuos is a lot nicer though). I really like working digitally because of the speed and accuracy that I can mask off areas, and because selecting color is really obvious, which is nice since I'm still really feeling out color use. Also digital color doesn't trash out your brushes or make weird smells and it's easy enough to haul that stuff around. There's actually a lot of things I'm still feeling out - getting really awesome value contrast is an ongoing thing, picking color palette is a big thing, I'm still figuring out what I want to do with shading, hatching, etc.
Inspiration wise I really pull from visually intense stuff, miniatures, comic books, tabletop RPG materials in particular. If I'm feeling I don't know what I want to draw usually looking at that sort of stuff will give me ideas. I'm also really inspired by the wealth of stuff on the internet, I'll want to experience what it'd be like to try making something like stuff I've seen, or I'll see something awesome technique wise and want to try it even if I don't really wind up using it or being good at it. I'm a little bit more likely to get blocked at a technical or emotional level than an inspirational one - like there'll be stuff I'll put off trying (drawing comics is a big one), or places where I'll be grinding along trying to feel out form or select okay colors, and it takes like forever to get anything I like, that sort of thing. Motivation wise, I really like drawing (and painting, though I'm still pretty new to that) - not just that I can make something that will be cool for me and other people to look at, but also it's fun to learn things and physically move to make things appear on blank paper. It's also escapism - I can go to places I can't go (for instance not stuck on the bus), see things that don't exist, and experience awesome game scenarios which wouldn't necessarily play out the same way in the real world.
Let's see.
Years ago I read through Figure Drawing Without a Model, which suggested that arty types could take a small sketchpad everywhere to draw from life. Somehow when I put this into practice this migrated into "take a 3.5" x 5" sketchpad everywhere and draw people who look interesting, and thumbnails of what you might want to develop while not on public transit/dead tired/looking at stuff online/at work." The more experienced I get, the more I wind up thumbnailing things. Even if this doesn't generate a variety of staging or details, it's comforting to have something to work with - I'm not starting completely cold hoping to build something awesome.
Actual tools for art-making vary with mood and whatever I've been thinking about. My present choice of pencils are Col-Erase Carmine Red and Light Blue, though I'll use 2H, H and F pencils too - basically what I'm after is something dark enough to be easily visible, soft enough to mostly avoid my bad habit of trying to etch lines deep into the paper, and easy to erase. My current favorite pens are Staedler Pigment liners - I'm still unsure whether I should/whether I'd prefer to work in brush inks. Even though I'll use marker sometimes, most of my coloring is done with a hand-down copy of Photoshop, using a hand-down Intuos tablet (a recent present, previously I'd been using a tiny Wacom Bamboo which was pretty good - the Intuos is a lot nicer though). I really like working digitally because of the speed and accuracy that I can mask off areas, and because selecting color is really obvious, which is nice since I'm still really feeling out color use. Also digital color doesn't trash out your brushes or make weird smells and it's easy enough to haul that stuff around. There's actually a lot of things I'm still feeling out - getting really awesome value contrast is an ongoing thing, picking color palette is a big thing, I'm still figuring out what I want to do with shading, hatching, etc.
Inspiration wise I really pull from visually intense stuff, miniatures, comic books, tabletop RPG materials in particular. If I'm feeling I don't know what I want to draw usually looking at that sort of stuff will give me ideas. I'm also really inspired by the wealth of stuff on the internet, I'll want to experience what it'd be like to try making something like stuff I've seen, or I'll see something awesome technique wise and want to try it even if I don't really wind up using it or being good at it. I'm a little bit more likely to get blocked at a technical or emotional level than an inspirational one - like there'll be stuff I'll put off trying (drawing comics is a big one), or places where I'll be grinding along trying to feel out form or select okay colors, and it takes like forever to get anything I like, that sort of thing. Motivation wise, I really like drawing (and painting, though I'm still pretty new to that) - not just that I can make something that will be cool for me and other people to look at, but also it's fun to learn things and physically move to make things appear on blank paper. It's also escapism - I can go to places I can't go (for instance not stuck on the bus), see things that don't exist, and experience awesome game scenarios which wouldn't necessarily play out the same way in the real world.