Too much inspiration
[] creatricks : 5. May 2004, 18:00
When I’ve been typing away on the script for The Last Stand of the Omega Club, other images has begun to form. The difference here is that I’m somewhat incapable of actully getting the images out of my head. Stupid hands. These images—which belong to the another comic idea I had before about a supernatural theatre enamble—would look amazing in colour and lots of shadows. It would also look a lot better if I didn’t try to draw them myself. But even though I’m aware of my limittions I have to go there and poke. Damnit. I need to learn not to begin to do several things at once.
Maybe the stuff you’re trying to do is not quite what you wanted it to be. To tell you the truth, I don’t know of any artist who feels that anything they do comes out the way they wanted it. Some get closer than others but in the end nothing compares to the stuff in our heads. You probably knew that, but if not now you do.
I tend to advocate a process oriented approach myself, rather than a goal oriented one. True the goal is what we often start out thinking about, to tell a story. And we get there one way or another. But the energy of the moment, during the process of doing the work, can be very effective in meeting that goal. If you’ve done all the preliminary work, imagined it all, written it down, and have reached the point where the story lives inside you, then you, or I do anyway – try to at least, stop worrying about it and just go draw. Set out on the yellow brick road.
You don’t have to accept it in the end, you can redraw things as many times as you like or use the work as a rough guide for someone else if you want. But to start I suggest you just trust your hands to interpret it as best they can. Ridiculing them [yourself in truth] gets you nowhere but to an ulcer and tends to slow down the whole process.
If the image aren’t coming yet, then maybe they just aren’t ready yet. Keep writing and thinking and dreaming about it and keep the drawing, when you are, loose and fun and exploratory and let it come out the way it wants to – don’t try to force into something it doesn’t want to be. It’s hard to do at first, we always want it to be perfect, a shining copy of something we imagined it to be. One way or another it’s going to be what it is though, and that’s not a bad thing by necessity. In the end I find the surprises more fun than the stuff that I meant to do.
good luck
Really nice site by the way. Needs more drawings though ;)
You know, you take a lot of photos. Using photo reference is by no means a sin…? Might help make it go more painlessly for you.
— max (@ 6. May 2004, 01:25)
Right now, I’m relentlessly learning proper anatomy. It’s a bit uphill so far, but I know it’s going to be worth it. Thanks. Long input is always nice, and it seems like I’m on the right path then.
— Nicklas (@ 6. May 2004, 03:07)
(Now you know how Niklas feels when some asshole destroys a perfectly good comment thread. Haha!)
Max’s drawings was insanely awesome, though.
— Tommy (@ 6. May 2004, 08:27)
As for you drawing it. Well, I’m letting you do a cover, isn’t that enough?
— Nicklas (@ 6. May 2004, 10:04)
— Tommy (@ 6. May 2004, 12:10)
— Nicklas (@ 6. May 2004, 17:08)