ILX Art Gallery: Tregaskin Memorial Wing (do not read if you hate me)

I've been feeling a bit blocked lately, and not much like drawing. Which is not unusual, it passes if I find some new inspiration.

I think one of the things that stops me is this kind of FEAR, that I have to do something ~important~ with these things, rather than just drawing for fun and kicks. Maybe I should start a new thread for this, and open it up to other creative types rather than selfishly talk about it on a thread that's all ME ME ME. But I need to talk about this.

I find it really paralysing, this idea that I should be ~doing something with~ all this art. It makes me feel kind of unable to do anything. And obviously it strikes worst when I'm unemployed. Because when I'm employed, all this is so obviously a hobby and something I do for kicks. But as soon as I'm unemployed, this idea keeps repeating itself (both internally and from other people making helpful suggestions) that I should be making a living from this. And that expectation, that should, it's completely paralysing for me. It doesn't make me work harder, it makes me sit staring off into space.

Is it really self defeating? To never want to think about or deal with the whole "should I market/sell/promote these things?" idea. Because it makes me feel really insecure and unhappy, when most of the time I just want to be made happy drawing swirlies. It makes me feel awful, like actually physically awful (worried, anxious, butterfly stomach) when art is something I try to use to make me feel nice.

Oh, STFU and just post some pretty pictures WCC, you're stupid for worrying about this stuff.

In my limited experience, making a living from your own efforts seems to consist of 90 % of hassling people and trying get their attention and being hassled in turn and less creativity than you'd expect or like.

I really hate that kind of work: I'm not business minded or even particularly interested in business details.

The other big minus is you're then under pressure to keep producing and have to give up those fallow periods where you don't feel that creative, but are probably essential for recharging your creative energies and developing new interests and new directions.

So personally I wouldn't be tempted to try to make my creative efforts my living, even if it was viable.

Yeah, all of that post seems very very OTM and you've hit the nail on the head WRT the discomfort I feel.

I'm sorry WCC, I guess I said all the wrong things in my last email. :(

I have the same thing wrt my writing. It has become much more difficult to do it since I started hanging out with people who make a living from writing.

If you don't feel like pushing in a moneymaking direction, there's no reason you should.

No, no, don't feel bad! I mean, I brought a lot of that stuff up, because I was thinking around it, so it's obviously been on my mind. And a lot of people have encouraged me to do similar things - and that's the important word, *encourage*.

The problem is completely in my head.

But, like, given the choice between spending 75% of my time doing an awful dayjob and 25% of the time doing the stuff I love - vs 90% of the time chasing people and work and only 10% of the time doing the stuff I love. It's never going to be an ideal situation, so one has to take the less bad option.

I guess it's kind of weird, because I've done it myself to other artists, said things like "that's beautiful - if you put that on a t-shirt, I want one!" which easily gets translated into "that's marketable - you should sell it!" And then it becomes the instant reflex reaction - instead of "that's good, I love it" it becomes "that's good, you should sell it" and then you turn into my mother and my ex boyfriend and all of these people whose attitudes I have found really poisonous towards, I dunno, not even making art, but just enjoying ~lyfe~.

It's a stupid, naive attitude, I know - these things should exist because they're beautiful, no other reason. But I just want to be happy, and worrying about money all the time is the number two happy killer in the universe. (after unrequited love.)

WCC : so glad to see more of your art.

i love the colours and the styling of the text.

the whole t-shirt debacle has clearly kicked you into action ,that and the loss of the soul sucking job you had.

Are you able/happy to tell us what happened with the t-shirt thing? Just interested in the outcome because stuff like that makes me mad. I wasn't on that board but saw the initial posts about it.

Oh, it worked out alright in the end! They admitted it, apologised for it, drew up a contract and sent over a quite decent fee. Happy ending all round, it's the kind of thing that gives one faith in the power of the internet (and also that corporations can sometimes behave decently to the little guy.)

Anyway, for some reason my brain this afternoon got it into my head that there was an album called this. And of course there isn't, there's a RH lyric that's a bit similar and a Cocteau Twins ep that's a bit similar but my head was going "who is that by? is it an early Pink Floyd track? argh!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7050/6859136937_99124385f0_o.jpg

Not entirely happy with it - I like the trees (though I was worried they wouldn't come out) but I don't like the ripples (though they looked alright in my sketchbook) but it'll do for now. Might revisit the idea later if I get inspired.

So we went to see the Kusama exhibit at the Tate earlier this week (and it was AMAZING, anyone within striking distance of London should totally go and see it if you have eyes) but at the same time, wandering through it, I was struck quite often by - um, I dunno, it sounds arrogant to say "how similar it is" when she is an internationally renowned artist and I'm a bedroom sketcher. But we have similar motifs, we address similar issues, and I came out of the show saying "OMG, I want to paint an Infinity Net all over my walls" (so far I have resisted that urge, but I might get bored this weekend.)

So I had this worry that I was going to come away unduly *influenced* (which is usually a good thing when you encounter another artist who rearranges your mind so that you want to do new things) but more with the fear that my stuff was going to end up looking like her, and not me. So yeah, I drew this.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6890372473_418448cf74_o.jpg

(Click through to Flickr for the quote/explanation if you are not familiar with the metaphor from the Bell Jar)

where in london is "like ripples on a shallow lake"? (if indeed it is a sketch of an actual place rather than an imagined one.) i'm unused to seeing such jagged drawings from you!

god, i loved the bell jar so much when i read it at age c.13, and i have totally forgotten that metaphor.

(cosign the kusama exhibition 100%)

i think A GIANT BROUGHT DOWN BY WEEDS would make an excellent woodblock print.

Ripples On A Shallow Lake is not anywhere in London, there are no hills like that in London!

it's based on teenage memories of upstate NY, the Finger Lakes and Lake George, those incredibly narrow lake valleys with super-steep hills above them, all covered in pine forest. That's not English terrain at all. (Though there are parts of Scotland that look like that, so maybe it's ancestral pining.)

It's funny coz the Bell Jar is one of those things that I read when I was 15 and I was like OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING THIS IS THE STORY OF LIFE, TEH UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!11ELEVENTY but as I grew up, I started to think, actually, no, this is kind of teenage and melodramatic and I should really grow out of it. But now I'm thinking I should revisit it as an adult, because there are things in there that are quite profound.

I wish I'd bought the book of the Kusama exhibit now, TBH but I bet it was like £40 or something.

WCC (ack almost used ur real n8me), this is for you when yr feeling bloecked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqZAxLqJkzA&list=FLLTIlMvmtkKWCC_QBv384Vw&index=3&feature=plpp_video
I love your arts

also god jeez that fucking fig tree has to be the #1 most haunting metaphor of my life

How did you learn to do this stuff digitally?

OK, the first half of that video I was all "WTF this doesn't even apply because this is not MY PROBLEM, this is not what I'm facing!!!" but the second half of it was just YES, this is the solution, even if that is not the problem, this is totally the solution and I need to remember this. And I'm usually pretty god with that whole disciplined "churn until stuff comes out" because I know that's the only answer. So thank yOU!

I don't really remember how I learned how to do this stuff digitally. My housemate back in NYC bought or pirated a copy of photoshop back in about 1994/5? And I read the manual and just started mucking around with it. Mostly through trial and error, admittedly. I'd scan in my drawings and at first I'd just want to colour them in, then it was, clean them up and colour them in, and then it was, do half the actual drawing in photoshop - but I still don't even know what half of photoshop does! (I only learned Select - Modify - Smooth like, last year!) I don't use my bamboo pad, either, which I should, I've just got so used to working on a Mac track pad. Just trial and error, mostly and seeing what works.

Not that anyone asked - or indeed cares - but I'm actually in the middle of working on a piece right now, and I remembered that I took a photo of it last night to post to twitter to go "LOL" at. So I'm actually going to document each stage as it happens, to show the stupidly convoluted process I go through to get from start to finish.

Anyway. I am drawing Jonny Greenwood because I am a sad Radiohead fan, yet, oddly, I have never even attempted to draw him before because he has such a strange face.

So here is the first step. You can see I've sketched out everything in pencil first (the paper is actually white, it's just a shitty iPhone picture.) Because I'm drawing a human face, I put down a grid first, to plot things out on and make sure everybody's nose is in its right place and people don't turn out like Picasso paintings, which is what happens if I don't grid it out. If I'm drawing a building or a person, I usually use some kind of grid, but if I'm not, I'll do the pencil work freehand. (Swhirlies are always freehand, there's really no way to grid out a swhirly, even with Fibonacci's help.)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7186/6892166777_694ff5b0d3_o.jpg

Despite the grid, I've still managed to get the eye on the left to be bigger, and lower on his face than the eye on the right (you should see how bad it would have been if I didn't use the grid) but I'm really happy that I've caught his melancholic expression, so I'm going to ink it as it is, and correct that ~eye problem~ in photoshop (if only Thom could have been so lucky) so I'm going to Rolf Harris off out of here and be back in a couple of hours to show you the next stage and see if you can tell what it is yet...

wheeee, isn't this fun? (probably not for anyone but me)

step-by-step behind-the-scenes stuff re: art (and music, etc) is always interesting imo

... waitin' for the ink to dry* ...

(just to give you some idea of the timescale of these things)

The next step is gonna be painful, it's gonna be sort of like I imagine it's like for women who post pictures of themselves without makeup for the first time ever, or things like that. I don't like people seeing these things until they're perfect so this is slightly embarrassing.

*If I don't give the ink good drying time, I'll get horrible smears when I go to take the pencil off with a kneaded eraser. Which I can fix in photoshop, but I'd rather not.

I've now inked it and scanned it. THIS IS NOT SO BAD! Like, it's pretty ugh and I feel weird about posting it to the internet like this, but... there's no massive inking errors (like when a line jerks off somewhere it shouldn't be, or the two halves of a curve don't meet up) and I haven't smeared anything or spilled wine all over it

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6892564943_9175a8a07e_o.jpg

The only thing that really bugs me is those eyes, but that is what photoshop is for.

But I will spend hours playing with it (first off, boosting the contrast so the lines are perfectly black, then cleaning out the felt tip marks) and possibly erasing the whole face and starting again digitally (I do this embarrassingly often) and this will probably take up the rest of my night, tra la la, this is totally my idea of fun.

(I've also decided to do the background separately, so that will be another job, repeating the process for the pattern that will go in the background, I want to do a sort of halo of plaited tree branches, Alfons Mucha stylee.)

Love seeing this sneak peek into the creative process of your work!

Stupid question maybe but the (c)KDT thing is only on the digitized images right?

some flyer/poster/sleeve work I did over the last few years.
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/226283_10150182520595047_30650290046_7338074_3849046_n.jpg
http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc3/14566_171818390046_30650290046_3391868_1062871_n.jpg
http://a2.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/127/079815d151364d1da4fc4e775fa630f2/l.jpg
http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/59442_426499630046_30650290046_5530017_3061144_n.jpg
http://www.societyofrockets.org/ff_cover.gif

pretty much done with this style, movin on to other stuff recently

and I haven't smeared anything or spilled wine all over it

haha OTM
I don't like working digitally but it's so much easier to fix mistakes and not have my Pigpen nature ruin a pic
plus sometimes the results look so crisp
tbh I like sketchy grid Greenwood much better, what an uncanny shot of his sad wan essence

whoa wait I didn't realize you were hand-inking these and then scanning them
fuck you're a good inker!!

^^ otm

"sad wan essence" is the first thing I've seen on ILX that has tempted me towards changing my display name.

It's really interesting to get to peek in on the process, WCC

Also, that is great work WCC! You're not the first artist I've seen say that his face is almost too strange to draw, but I think you captured that weird gaunt alien E.T. he had in the 90s really well.

you are a very talent artist

shakey's stuff was nice too, like the OG SF psych feel

I need to do more arts, it just makes me a better person.

I've definitely slowed down in terms of finished pieces lately (been focusing on doing a stop motion animation piece primarily)

WHOA Shakey Mo! I was gonna shout at you ask you nicely if I could keep this thread for just my stuff, but flipping heck, those are lovely! Post away! Thank you so much for sharing them. I really enjoyed seeing those. I do love that 60s SF poster feel - but you're right, there's only so far you can go with it. What's your technique - are they hand inked, digital or what?

yes, the (c) this is only on the digital image as obviously the sad wan man essence sketch hasn't got one because it was taken with iPhone so I couldn't watermark it.

Haha, Abbotttttt I am so glad I'm not the only person who ends up destroying her own artwork through simply being a slob. Rings from teacups, flakes of chocolate that I don't realise it's chocolate until I try to flick it away and there's a brown stain on the edge of my sketchbook. And I used to draw in bars, a lot, but I had to stop after one too many beer flood disaster taking out an entire sketchbook. (ARGH.)

Thanks, I have always been quite proud of my inking skillz, I used to ink other comic book artists' stuff when I was at art school, I love doing it so much.

"Sad wan essence" fucken LOL.

I'm kind of annoyed, because looking at the pencil, I realise that I must have done something to the left side of his hair, which actually brought it more in line with the original source photo - but the slight curve of the line of hair makes it look much more Jonny-like for the simple reason that that hair is usually in motion, flying over the top of a telecaster or a theremin or something. (I love this original photo because he is holding a pair of scissors and is actually hacking the shit out of Thom's hair without even looking at it, which is why Thom had such terrible hair for much of the Pablo Honey era.)

And yeah, Melissa, he is SO strange looking. Obviously, he is not unattractive, in fact, his oddly composed features come together in a pleasing way to create a very handsome man. But individually, the pieces of his face are just so odd they're really hard to draw. His jaw is completely disconnected from what is going on in the rest of his face.

Once I do the shading, and put the pupils of his eyes back in (it's amazing how just adding that white dot in the pupil turns a flat picture into a portrait) he'll come back to pale and wan sad life.

This not the actual reference photo, but it's from the same session. I just love the expression on Thom's face so much, like "what have you DONE to me?!?!?"

http://www.radiox.ru/pics/mag/1994-patpope/1994patpope04.jpg

Sorry. I will not phangurl out. I will get back to drawing.

no worries WCC wasn't sure if this was just a new version of other ILX0r gallery threads or what. oddly we seem to rely on fairly similar techniques for the most part - I do the pencilling and inking by hand, scan it in and clean up stray marks etc and then lay in the colors digitally in photoshop.

although when I'm sketching or doodling I tend to just stick to ink. a lot of the pattern-y stuff above was all inks/no pencils once I had the general layout worked out.

I'm getting kinda sick of the sight of the dude at this point, but carrying on the experiment. Here is the retouched version, wherein I have fixed the wonky unevenness of the eyes. Slight fear I might have moved them too far in the opposite direction, but it's definitely looking better to me, and I've fixed his hair, too, so it has more movement, more like the pencil sketch.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7182/6893818699_a45c6e25b8_o.jpg

that def looks better - alignment of the eyes was off in the original, I think

I knew the eyes were off in the original - seriously off - but I liked the expression in them, so I knew I could just go with it and fix it in retouching.

If I'm feeling kinda insecure or not sure about a sketch in the line art stage (and it often looks weird and two dimensional because, well, it's line art) then I'll do some basic colour blocking in black and white (usually with 25% or 50% fills in grey) to build up an idea of how it's going to look when it's coloured in.

Because it's a heck of a lot easier to fix something like a badly angled eyebrow or a lopsided lip when it's in black and white, and you're only dealing with two colours, than once it's coloured and has gradients in it and everything has to be colour matched and corrected if it's changed. And this is the thing that always strikes me - how completely you can change the expression on someone's face just by adding, removing, angling or thickening a single line in the face - especially in the eyes or lips. Faces are amazing like that.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7056/6893818705_3062e8ec79_o.jpg

It's also funny because this is when I notice that I really have to accentuate the adam's apple, because if I don't, he really does look like a GURL.

Now I'm going to bed.

yeah faces are incredible - if I don't have a photo reference to work from I end up with some really bizarre looking people

This is why I swear by using grids to get eyes and noses in approximately human proportions! (Obviously this doesn't always work, as evidenced by the pencil sketch)

I once did a Julian Opie style moving portrait in a gif, where the guy blinked and kind of twitched his nose a bit, changing his face with just a few tiny lines. It's really amazing how expressive a single line can be.

kinda one of the things I love about cel animation, so much done with so little

It's that abstraction process - on both sides, what the artist knows to put out/leave in - but also how the human brain fills in emotion based on very minimal cues. It's amazing, I love it.

Anyway, Jonny is looking hilarious today! It's like Carter the Painter's Cat when he was only half painted and had to go out without a tail. Or, a mouth in this case.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7042/6896396763_858b04cdb3_o.jpg

You can tell what bits I work on, and in which order. I usually do the hair first - not just because I love hair, but because it provides the frame for the face, and sets the colour palette - especially if the person is a brunette, it makes the colours of the face "pop" against it - if I do hair last, I always tend to end up making the face too dark simply as a reaction against the white of the page. Every new colour and new bit you add ends up affecting the colour composition of the whole thing, and I'm constantly adjusting to make it all harmonious. (I suppose I really should block out the lips in colour on another layer so that he doesn't look so alien, but I want to adjust the pink of his lips to the colour of his face, not the other way around.)

I use the blobs above his head as a palette - I usually sample the colours directly off a photograph of the person, but often have to brighten them, so I need a record of the processed colour I'm using. (Shadows are not black, they have colours, this is the most important thing I ever learned, and I learned it from a novel, not a painting class, oddly enough.)

I do a basic gradient on the face to get it blocked out, and a few bits of shading to make it look curved, the go straight in to the eyes - once you've got a person's eyes right, the rest of them really kind of falls into place. Really wanted to capture Jonny's bright-eyed, alert expression, but also get the wan sadness. But it is funny to see his eyes looking v v realistic and his nose and mouth so flat. LOL.

Aaaaannnnnnndddd... a bit more airbrushing to give him a MOUTH and a proper nose (ugh, I hate drawing noses, why are they SO hard?) and heeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrre's JONNY!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7046/6897361733_f8a2870a8b_o.jpg

I did some colour blocking to add a background because it looked so unfinished against the white (I will at some point put in a proper background, maybe, but I like it the way it is right now.)

is wandering greenwood eye grid-sketch for sale?

Not that you'd know it from an old 90s scan of him, but his eyes are that sort of hazel color where they're very green around the outer edge with a red-gold ring around the pupil. But I really love how this is coming together so far! The colors have really brought it to life. x-posts

And the fully colored version is stunning, sorry I didn't see it before I posted!

Yeah, I know about the Greenwoods' amazing hazel-gold-green eye colour (I mean, I'm not that bothered about Jonny, but his brother - ::SWOON::) and I tried to make it more pronouncedly green-gold but it just wasn't working with the light, so I made them more brown-gold. (they were at one point purple, which was... interesting. Colours in drawings don't always look right if they're completely naturalistic, it's weird.)

Sorry, Philip, if you mean the pencil sketch, that's long gone, the pencil gets erased during the inking process. I tend to discard the paper as soon as it's scanned, because it's not that important to me. (I mean, I keep them, they're usually floating somewhere round the flat) but they're not what matters.

Really tempted to draw a Thom to go with him but jesus christ, I think I drew Thom approximately 40,000 times between 1993 and 2001, I think it would be ridiculous.

I have some photos I'd like to see you attempt!

What, photos of Thom? You could ... share them ... and I could have a go. But, y'know, because you asked me to. Not because I *want* to or anything, you understand.