I've been stuck in a really bad, soul crushing artist's block lately. It has just hurt to even lift a pencil, and I have wanted to break my tablet over my knee more than once. But I think I'm moving out of it... I am currently visiting Denmark, and found a place yesterday that sells Imagine FX Magazine (probably the only place in Scandinavia that does...) It was incredibly inspiring to read through it last night! Also, watching youtube-videos by
Sycra,
HowlSeage and Will Terrell the last couple of days, has helped me cope. My poor Cintiq had probably not been safe and in one piece, had I not had their good words of encouragement.
And I had a really good experience today! Being at my parents' place, I decided to shuffle through my old old drawings and paintings. And was I surprised... I had no idea, how much I actually was capable of when I was 10, 11, 12, 13... I must have been drawing from dusk 'till dawn those years, because there are just so many drawings! Of course I did loads of "fan art", mostly W.I.T.C.H. and Star Wars inspired - and Lord of the Rings! I think I for real had ambitions about making my own illustrated version of those books, at the fine age of 11. And I am surprised about how detached my illustrations are from the movies, that came out just around then. I remember watching the WETA-Workshop DVD documentaries on repeat, dreaming about joining a team like that... So I actually did many original designs. Especially armor and weapons, but also environments and character design. I was ambitious! (I was also the first kid in class to actually read the books, and I even got into Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion shortly after that.)
I did tons of acrylic painting too, and two of the smaller pieces made me sit and look at them for a while. One is a moonlit landscape, painted in a very graphic style with complementary colors. The other is more painterly, clearly aiming for an Alan Lee inspired look, but with acrylic paint. It's a blue-greyish skinned angel with long black hair and black wings, walking solemnly with a black torch above her head, that has a blue fire. It is by no means a masterpiece - it doesn't even have a finished background, because I was even lazier back then than I am now. But it just gave me a good gut-feeling, and I thought to myself "I wonder what I would have been able to do, if just I had kept it up..."
It's a bittersweet feeling, indeed. I often regret that I stopped drawing and painting almost completely, after I finished 9th grade - 16 years old, where my style had become even more graphic. When I stopped at my university over one year ago, my skills were actually worse than when I stopped practicing 5 years earlier. Of course I spent all my classes drawing weird shit on my notebooks, to the point where I even stopped buying notebooks with lines and used a sketchbook for school notes. But I did not develop my style, and I began slacking off. And when I started at the university... ugh... I stopped. Like from one day to the other. Drawing in class just wasn't acceptable in the same way. People gave me weird looks, and I shied away. And at my place, I spent almost all my time playing video games or partying.
In other words. From keeping a sketch book, I moved on to fit my sketches literally in between my school notes, until I stopped sketching all together.
My lines were just better then, when I was 16, and I had even begun shading and grasping forms. It took me one month of intense studying with a professional artist last November, to even remember the concept. And the ideas I had! Looking back at that time, it seems like I lived completely in a fantasy-world of light sabers and dragons, constantly channeling it out through my drawings.
I think what I realized today, is how selfish my artist's block really has become. And somehow... it instantly made me feel better. Because the perfect image isn't flowing to me right away, and the anatomy isn't perfect, I just shut down like a crybaby and pity myself. 12-year old me would probably just have laughed at me, telling me to calm down and draw another dragon. With tiger-stripes and awesome armor, and a hot elf lady on top, with huuuge... magic swords, dual wielded! And, and...
I have to try and do that later. the very thought feels refreshing! But first, I am off to see the lovely
Ducktrot for a jolly good cup of coffee! I've been missing you, dewd!
Maybe there's time for some thumb-nailing, before I have to go...