#023

Seven Days.

Otherwise known as a week. This week I worked on the rough draft for the short story, finishing a few pages. I find that I can only do a couple before my brain begins to slow down and I need to quit. Which is why it has taken so long to get to this point. Once I finish with the rough draft, I intend to hand it to a few of my friends and family for peer review so that I can edit it accordingly. Since I work independently, and I am too broke to hire a professional editor, this is pretty much my only option.

The Art.

On this fine Sunday afternoon, I suffered from a severe bout of artists’ block, and was only able to churn out a page of random doodles before setting down the pen and deciding to just use an old piece of art. I will still include the sketch along side, however, so no fear there. This picture I drew about a year ago when I took a class on Domestika, which is an online tutorial site with all kinds of neat things to learn. Everything is usually on sale. The course was for character design and illustration, and the figure below was my piece. It took me a while, since I had no motivation to finish, but I eventually got it done, and I am reasonable pleased with it. I had to do a study on the anatomy of horses because I had never drawn one before.

His name is Peter, and he acts as a martial of sorts in and around the small town of Mitersdale, tucked away in-between two mountain ranges on a wide open field. Set in a science fiction-fantasy fusion world, with technology similar to that of Star Wars, Peter protects the town and surrounding villages from monsters, bandits, and from the roaming Titans, which stand tall as mountains and will kill any living human on sight. The piece was inspired by a Cosimo Galluzzi picture.

Art Block.

A common malady to all who dabble in any variety of the arts, it is a combination of lackluster for the project and a subsequent flat brain. Often I find myself sitting at my desk staring at a sheet of paper thinking to myself, “I don’t want to do this, and I don’t have any ideas even if I did”. Because when you have an idea, especially a good one, you are motivated to work, but without that crucial fuel all you are is a boat adrift in the sea of creative juices. Personally, whenever this occurs, and I need to get things moving, I begin by taking out a piece of sketch paper and drawing up some quick ideas. That sometimes manages to stimulate the creative flow, and from there I can move on.

But sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s okay, because there is no hard deadline for the short story (yes, I’m talking about that now); actually, that may be the problem. No deadline means no motivation, and so it takes months to finish one drawing. Self-imposed deadlines mean nothing to my subconscious, because my subconscious also knows I was the one who made up that deadline in the first place. I imagine if I was on a payroll, or if I had a serious consequence for not finishing in time, then I would hurry things along. But I don’t, so I don’t.

Finishing.

So now we come to the time when I finish this blog. I hope to continue working on the short story’s rough draft; I only have maybe ten pages left in total. Once that happens, I can submit it to my peers for review and get to work on the character design. Having read this, I trust you will continue out your week in higher spirits, and that you will share this blog with all of your peers for review. Comment about a time when you had artists’ block and what you did to fix it. Toodles.