Tag: books

SPREY Log#07 – Plans for the future

Posted on August 14, 2021 by Styxcolor

This week saw rather inner growth than visible artistic output, but I’m almost sure, it’s legacy will show in future art. A rare occasion of health problems knocked me out for three days while I lost the others to coping with a steep increase in anxiety. Apparently, The War of Art is affecting me more than movies like Event Horizon, and that one affected me. On the other hand there would be no resistance if there wasn’t some great potential for growth for me in it, right? Something I can’t even completely understand from my current perspective, otherwise it wouldn’t scare me.

I stunned myself writing about the mere concept of “things I should have drawn years ago” last time. I nervously avoided thinking about what that would be for me. Thinking about taking action felt even worse. So after all, does it turn out I’m still avoiding the main thing? My actual, real authentic work that is meant to be created? How can this be? I’m making SPREY and that one fights a lot against me already. I wondered whether I got too comfortable and too slow with it. I wondered whether the scope of the thing is just too big for me. But then I remembered myself that looking for flaws will always be successful, because all and everything is flawed, while working on the thing or improving the quality of said thing actually takes effort. I will not give in to any drift away from SPREY. No matter what happens, I have to keep learning with that comic. It will never realize it’s full potential if I don’t go that road until the end. SPREY lead to a myriad of improvements in my art and artistic process already and is hopefully entering a new era soon where things start to become a little bit more consistent.

Growing as an artist is as uncomfortable as something can get. I thought about my recent improvements in understanding of light and color. It would be a nightmare to try to teach that. I would sound like I was rambling about the soul of a piece while I’m actually talking about a complex interconnected system of art fundamentals that will never work out for you if you don’t put in the mileage and personalize it to you. And then you must do this in tandem with reminding yourself of the theory and the works of people you look up to again and again and again, because you will forget a lot. This naked truth of how things go and it doesn’t sound too enticing. I think it’s actually comparable to creating a comic, writing a novel or other projects. Prepare to write and draw several drafts if necessary. I can see why resistance would tell you nah we’re good, don’t attempt to climb that mountain. Especially if there isn’t any guaranteed reward. And there isn’t.

If I wasn’t working on it already, SPREY would definitely be on my “things I should have drawn years ago” list. I am not on the quality level I want to be with it, but at the same time my idea and understanding of that desired quality level is shifting. And no, it doesn’t go up. When I started I wasn’t even sure whether SPREY should be a webcomic, a print comic kept in bookpages or a pseudo interactive light novel. It showed. Chapter 1 is so raw it’s actually awesome again, chapter 2 showed me my limits and actually broke through them, making chapter 3 possible. Chapter 3, again, is an uncomfortable hybrid that has left behind interactivity, but isn’t fully in a webscroll format because it has too many panels in the same row for that, while it doesn’t fully break out into a “proper” printable page size either. What will prevail for the future? I was surprised how simple that was to answer. Apparently big singular panels that are too close to me make me anxious. I don’t want to be that close. Hello printable book as my future standard format then, not only for comics. It would be nice to know my works are kept in a timeless shareable format. The Instagram square is nice and all, but harder to translate away from social media if Instagram once dies for art like it did. Books and zines don’t die like this. And no, I will not rail against their digital counterparts, those are awesome, too. So, books, ebooks, videogames it is.

100 Days of SPREY – 08, 09

Posted on December 13, 2020 by Styxcolor

Whops! My week was so demanding that I unfortunately couldn‘t keep up with the blog like I would have liked to. Most importantly: all the comic work got done, the rest of the time was eaten up by commissions, a lot of reading and learning and on Wednesday my very first appearance as a guest on an art podcast! It was the Turaco Art Cast with comic artists Frank Salazar and Anna Raub. That was a pretty exciting and unique experience!

Unfortunately I paid for all the important work that got done with being quite exhausted in the second half of the week.

It is indeed a fine line between „Don‘t destroy yourself with crunch“ and „You do not need to feel good and comfortable all the time, otherwise you will never tackle any challenge outside of your personal comfort zone“…which you happen to need for growth.

I read „A short history of myth“ by Karen Armstrong this week and after a long break continued reading Robert Henri‘s „The Art Spirit“. Especially the latter one baffles me. How could I have spent my whole life drawing while apparently not knowing anything about art? Henri is like the well-meaning experienced art grandpa mentor I never had. He puts the reader aside and tells them what it‘s really all about without preaching. If you are inclined to do so, check out his book for yourself! At least for me it helped me to enjoy art in itself, whether by me or others, more again.

The books also made me attempt an experimental mindset shift. The myth book was a refreshing breeze that showed me how differently other cultures interpret and depict the human condition and our basic and most important struggles. The unfair and struggling nature of life comes to mind and how to deal with death and mortality for example. And after that book made my brain softer and more open to new ways, there came The Art Spirit. We artists really are in a great and ungrateful position at the same time. We get to experience and play with human emotion all the time, stories, uncovering secrets in the human psyche and in one way or the other influencing the people around us and helping to solve problems in a creative way. While many instructors seem to agree that the best art, writing and any other creative endeavor is done best in a state of selflessness, the artist has no chance to get there without meticulously exploring themselves and their own life and tastes first. That almost seems like a contradiction. Won‘t looking at and into yourself all the time make you an egoist on the canvas? Wouldn‘t you be tempted to paint self-indulgent pieces nobody else would even attempt to connect to? I‘d argue knowing yourself very very well gives you the freedom to reach out in the first place and maybe even forget yourself for a moment. Meeting other people who disagree with you or do the very same thing you do, but better, or people who just don‘t care about your work at all, won‘t shatter you anymore. You will even be readier to accept that they have an inner life as vivid as yours and that your art does not have to be part of that if they just don‘t connect with it.

There is another exciting thing that I found in the book and need to tell you about immediately. Henri argues that it would be an ideal state for an artist, if they created what is genuine and authentic to themselves and what they are here to create all the time and without compromises. That would be their way to live their life to it‘s fullest. And playfully engaging with that creation every day would be the thing that creates any form of success as byproduct. So…the success is not the goal, it happens on the side. Bold thesis, don‘t you think? But it might as well happen that the success never happens or at least not in the lifetime of the artist. If that is so, how should you know whether you are doing it right or not? Apparently outside validation is unreliable to see whether something is good or not. Almost in all times people have rejected new things only to turn around and claim them as new proven standard later, how things should always have been. But then worrying about money is just a reality of life, worrying about being connected to people and not ostracized. I guess we artists should not ignore that, as that would be ignoring reality, but we must be ready to sacrifice our comfort or tendency to seek it in order to rise above.

See you in the next blog entry!