putting it all together like pieces of a puzzle (Patreon)

hello! (⌒ω⌒)𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘

lots of fun process to share this month since I went back and forth quite a bit deciding on the postcard. sometimes an idea doesn't work out or doesn't work out the way you thought it would. either way, there's so much to learn from the process, so let's dive into it!

speedpaint is up top, wallpapers are at the bottom. enjoy~

song credits:

A Guide Through the Eternal Dark / City Girl & Guided Tour

Asylum From the Transient Form / City Girl & Guided Tour

The Insight of Solitude / City Girl & Guided Tour

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as usual, I like to start with creating a moodboard and gathering images or ideas that feel relevant. putting them all together in one place is super helpful and often lends me insight into what I'm trying to express. in this case, clarity was gleaned from figuring out what wasn't working, expansion of idea through process of elimination.

I originally wanted to make a painting based off a sketch I had done during spring of last year. I thought it fit nicely into the theme of emerging from winter, cutting away old, dead growth to make room for new life.

I sketched out a few other ideas to get down whatever was floating around in my head. it's a nice way to test the strength of an idea and see if it has legs or if other ideas are better suited to the piece.

more brainstorming. nothing quite gelling yet, but that's fine and besides I'm having fun learning and exploring!

I like to do value tests (breaking a piece down into 2-3 values), because it's a quick way to judge the initial impact or oomph of a piece. this blog post explains it in an easy to understand way. it was at this stage that I was beginning to sense that my conviction in the idea was wavering. the value tests felt incoherent, lacking a focal point. whether it was the pose, composition, arrangement of values, or a combination of all three was hard for me to tell. I find that when I have trouble parsing a way forward is when something is sitting a bit too far outside my comfort zone and the idea needs more time for me to decipher.

I decided to try a rough pass of the full piece anyway, because I really like the idea. doing this provided a fork in the road: take more time to diagnose an idea that would likely curdle under pressure vs. move on to another idea that wouldn't present as much resistance. I scrapped the idea for the time being.

value tests of the final postcard that came to me more smoothly, so I proceeded with confidence.

an idea I really like when it comes to art (and life in general) is that nothing is wasted. it's an extension of the idea that there is no goal, just continual experience. I could've seen my meandering with ideas as lost time/effort/resources and been upset (my younger self often was), but it's hard to ignore that where I ended up was undoubtedly influenced by what came before. for example, keen eyes might spot that parts of the acrylic painting made their way into the final postcard!

I wouldn't have gotten the idea to mix elements from two pieces together if I hadn't followed through on an idea in the first place. everything builds on each other, ideas are interconnected. they're all pieces in an ever-shifting puzzle and I'm finding ways to put them together one step at a time.

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