Art Journal 2010

Daniel thought mashing up this with this might be cool. And I think he was right:

RESPECT.

I’ve spent most of my life
letting my demons convince me
I don’t deserve it.

So I’ve seldom expected it.
Rarely asked for it.
Never demanded it.

That must change.
And my first demand is
that I demand respect from

MYSELF.

This is what resulted when I gessoed the cover of my art journal and splashed on something colorful, evocative, and symbolic of my effort to get all authentic and sincere in my life and stuff.

Respect to Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins for the lyrics from which I ripped my 2010 motto:

A newly-finished page in my art journal/sketchbook, with Prismacolor pencils and ZIG pens.

On the off-chance that someone decides to point out that not all these words are actual synonyms of the word ‘fool’, or may contain misspellings, or other provocative elements … I invite you to digest the bottom line. <grin>

Most of the creative stuff I do, I do with almost zero-zilch-nada formal training. Oddly, the one thing I DO have training in – theatre arts – is something I haven’t actually done in over a decade, unless you count some of my better roleplaying experiences.

Anyhow, typically when it comes to sketching/drawing/painting/crafting – and most computer design stuff as well – I get a how-to book or search on the Interwebz and try to work through the tutorials that interest me. I’ve been lucky enough to manage this well enough in the digital design realm to count on it as my source of income, but in terms of tactile art stuff like drawing and painting, I’ve done lots of flirting over the years but never really put my heart and soul into it. But doing CED 2010 has awakened a pretty strong desire to do just that. As a result, I’m forging ahead with things like the image above, which was originally a pencil sketch of my silver triskelion ring I did for a recent tutorial. Of course, as I’ve already written in earlier posts, I seem to have a need – at this point at least – to scan in the stuff I draw or paint in the material world and  play around with it in Photoshop to create a sort of hybrid.

This time, I layered a watercolor wash underneath the pencil sketch of the ring and played with the layers until I achieved a color effect that I like.

At some point, I ought to probably get some sort of real-life mentor/teacher/coach to help me and guide me through this stuff, but I must admit, for now, I’m having fun with all this creative activity and I’ve surprised myself with how much I’m not really bothered about how ‘good’ it is.

Let’s hope I continue to keep the inner critic in check and just keep creating and sharing. ‘Cause right now I really like how this is going.

I dunno, it just sounds like a cool name to hook you in to take a look. So, take a lookie at what I made:

How it came to be:

1. I drew a pencil sketch of my right hand, just messing around, thinking about the CED January theme of “body”.

2. I had a big piece of cardboard that I’d done some test painting and color-mixing on with acrylics, and the other day I ripped it up to toss it into the recycle bin.

3. Then I thought I’d scan in the various bits of the ripped-up paint cacophony to provide some background texture for future artwork.

4. I also scanned in the pencil sketch of my hand.

5. I got an itch, mashed the two images together while playing around for a couple hours in Photoshop and  – VOILA! -  the colorful oddity above.

This is the first iteration of the weird tarot-esque tableaux I described yesterday, but it’s definitely not intended to be the last. I will however suggest that it may be the, um … silliest.

I present to you The Fool, The Hanged Man, the Empress, and the Shark version 1 – rendered in the style of creativity that was most easily at hand today, LEGOs.

It was a real effort getting the models to take their jobs seriously and remain properly posed, but eventually they earned their pay and came through for me. Nevertheless, I look forward to working with live models once I start sketching out later versions of this motif. These brickheads tend to be far too snooty for me. Especially the monkey.