Sleep on It- Blog Post (Patreon)

There's a kind of magic that sometimes happens with art.  You spend all week on a painting, working, reworking, adjusting just so- maybe even overworking, then trying to pull it back.  The colors feel muddy, the colors feel dull, the piece feels over rendered, over labored, stale.  What you thought might be one of your better pieces, maybe a portfolio piece starts to look like trash to you, and maybe you even start to feel kinda embarrassed by it.

Ok, fine.  Trust the process.  You've done this before, you've salvaged it before.  Maybe you dig up some examples- similar in style, similar in struggle, to remind yourself to have faith.  Maybe you share them on Twitter- nobody cares.  This isn't looking so great.

With every illustration having the possibility of being the one that Finally Gets You An Agent, Finally Opens Doors, every piece bears the responsibility of Needing to Really Wow, and apparently, those didn't, and you definitely know in your bones this one won't.  But still, you persist.  A week in, you aren't a quitter.

You always give your all, and then some, so when you need your desk to teach a class, you stash the piece aside, pulling an extra long night to try and get it all done, and waking up with a killer migraine to thank you for your troubles.  This means another day when the Ugly Piece, the Overworked Illo sits on your desk, sits on a stretcher board, and keeps you from working on a piece that might be The One That Opens Doors.  Who needs to gamble when you're an artist looking for work?  It also means you feel like warmed over garbage from over-exerting yourself.

The next day, you feel ok.  You really throw yourself into finishing this piece, once and for all.  Today or never, it's getting done.  And hey, you do it.  You manage to make a lotta progress, you manage to get a lotta painting done, and the weather and time are your friend today.  The hyperfocus clicks, and you're ready to use all your salvage tricks, all the tricks that can turn trash into treasure.

Except those tricks don't work, not really.  It doesn't turn dross into gold.  And as you pull the blue tape off the illustration, you free it from it's confines, you really start to doubt your own ability, which isn't anything new for you.  But hey, you're done, your back aches, you're risking another migraine, and you're ready to start another piece, at least, tomorrow you'll be ready.  Tonight you're taking a bath and going to bed.

Ok, but then you peek your head into the studio, just checking on the cat before you go to bed.  You look at the piece in the dark- hey, not bad, not bad at all.  Better than you remembered, maybe almost good.  But nah, it's dark, and surely your eyes are playing tricks right?  So you turn on the light and--

Hey, it is actually better than you remembered.  A lot better.  The lighting?  It's good.  And while there are areas you could definitely clean up digitally, it's an easy fix.

This is the magic of giving a piece time.  Allowing it to sit, unpondered, unobserved, and marinate.  Giving yourself time away from your disappointments, time away from Shoulda Coulda Woulda, time away from what you had envisioned and what you actually accomplished.  Will this be the one that finally opens those doors for you?  Probably not- none of the past ones were.  But are you ashamed of it?  Nah.  And are you going to share it online?  Sure, because you never win if you never play the game.

This illustration will have a full watercolor tutorial available soon, but for a walkthrough on the process now, check out this thread! https://twitter.com/Nattosoup/status/1422648229972353024