At the time of writing, I have just finished Assignment Three and I am waiting for my tutor's feedback. I've had a whole weekend full of anxiety and depression. I have been trying to understand where the feelings are coming from. Why do I feel blocked? The usual notions of the gap between skill and ideas obviously come up, but this time it feels like that's not the whole story.
What is the story I am telling myself? What is the story I want to tell others?
For my day job, I have to spend a long time commuting. At the moment it's not too bad but it still eats up a chunk of my day just driving. I find it hard to sketch in packed trains, and it's impossible to do so when I am driving like I am with my current client. So the best way for me to make the most out of this time is not to randomly browse or lose myself in social media.
I have become engaged with audiobooks and podcasts. One of my favourites for insight and energy is the Creative Pep Talk podcast by Andy Miller a.k.a. Andy J Pizza. I've been listening for over a year now, and a theme that Andy often comes back to (it's a conceptual baby of his) is the idea of 'taste'.
In creative fields, it's often said that someone has good taste. It could be a chef's palette, a record collection or a curated gallery. It's like a combination of our influences ("you have a great taste in music!"), our special skills, and our stories. So this morning, after struggling to even put pen to paper, I realised it was because I really want to stand for something. I don't necessarily want to stand out, to be applauded or revered. But I do want to be heard. The juxtaposition to that is that I am very sensitive to criticism, so my brain is doing cartwheels because of it's perceived risk to be exposed, criticised or somehow caught out.
I'm conscious that I am getting better at being in touch with my feelings and energy. I'm also naturally good at patterns and connections, but I find it very hard to understand the patterns in my own work.
Yesterday, in trying to disconnect my brain from overthinking, I was looking through my Spotify app, looking for inspiration (or at least distraction!). Spotify gets better and better at understanding your musical taste. It provided me with a shortlist of my top artists and bands from the past ten years! This was my taste in music, right here. I plugged my account into obscurifymusic.com and it gave me an idea of my genre preference too!
It was at this point that I decided to try and make some connections in the artwork that resonates with me. Like my musical taste, I appreciate a wide and eclectic range of music, so I decided that I would only select images that I felt an emotional connection to. My taste is like a family tree and has a heritage of influences and stories that come together in a melting point. I didn't want to try and great a list of all of those influences and stories. I purposefully gave myself a constraint of selecting things that resonate now.
Results
Music
So, according to Spotify, my musical tastes are artists like:
Muse
Foo Fighters
Daft Punk
Queen
Elbow
David Bowie
AC/DC
Little Boots
Apparently, this puts my tastes firmly in the Rock & Electro genres, and a genre I hadn't been aware of called Permanent Wave (kinda like New Wave, but more... permanent?).
This was actually really useful for me, as permanent wave has its roots in 70's Punk-rock and then builds on Rock and Electronica of New Wave - keeping the spirit alive. For me, those speak to non-conformity, experimentation, sophistication, and an element of deep thought into what goes into the music.
It's interesting to see what this says of me, my personality, and my own voice.
Artwork
I went through the artist galleries of a number of well-known illustration agencies to see the work of contemporary artists and illustrators. I also went to the websites of a number of illustrators I have noticed in the past.
I gave myself one criterion - I would only select the image if it evoked an emotional response. That I had a more visceral connection to the work that went above simple appreciation. As such my selection is not exhaustive, I tried to be as hard as I could in my selections. I put my selected images into a Pinterest board that you can see below. I then used Pinterest's features to recommend similar images to match those I had already chosen. A few more made the cut.
Observations
I started by trying to separate my observations into topics, more as a way to collect my thoughts than anything else. I also took the opportunity to show my Pinterest board to my fellow students on the Discord chat server that I help to moderate. I wanted to see what the selection of images said to others.
Subjects
One of my fellow students noticed that I am drawn to images which are observational. They show the relationship between people and place. Perhaps this is why I enjoyed Section Three of Illustration Sketchbooks so much? The images I have chosen feel almost voyeuristic to me. They make me feel like I am there, watching but not interacting with the story. It somehow feels like a privilege to me, to feel in those spaces with those people.
I also noticed that I seem to be drawn to space. For the most part, the images feel expansive in some way. I feel emotional when I look at them; a feeling of awe and beauty in the space that exists around or beyond. That space also makes me feel uneasy. It creates tension and in that tension is discomfort, but I like it. Crave it, even.
Water also seems to feature prominently in the work I've selected, and this wasn't conscious. Neither does it feel surprising. I think I need to dig deeper with this aspect and explore more of my relationship with that element.
Tone
The first thing that came to mind when I thought about tone was a sense of melancholy. I was watching an old episode of Doctor Who [1] over the weekend which is one of my favourites and really spoke to me as I was reflecting on my image selections.
Sally: I love old things. They make me sad. Kathy: What’s good about sad? Sally: It’s happy for deep people.
It made me laugh and think at the same time. What's wrong with melancholy? It doesn't have to mean depressive! It's a pensive sadness and pensiveness involves thought, feeling, and introspection. And that describes me on most days. I feel like I am constantly struggling with the propensity of my brain to want to think and think and think. To delve deep and understand.
But I think that it also helps me empathise, to feel a connection with places as well as people. And whilst situations can be sad, or hard. There is something beautiful and absolutely natural in that sadness. And life... just goes on. It gives me hope, I suppose, and hope is a happy thing.
Complementing the melancholy is a sense of calm to the images and often a feeling of poignancy. They all feel that they have complexity, even though they are often not busy. There is a feeling of loneliness to them, as there are a lot of lone characters, and where there are multiple people there is a sense of tension.
Execution
One thing that shows through strongly is an emphasis on light and shadow and a contrast between light and dark. I seem to be drawn to the stark lines drawn by shadows, particularly cast by buildings. There seems to be a juxtaposition between the organic and man-made.
I know I have a taste for line-work so it surprised me that some of the most powerful images don't involve linework. Where there is line work it's regular weight, and I can see the influence of ligne claire. This doesn't sit with me very well. The last section I have completed has told me that I can do well when I am looser and more free with my gestures and line weight. I also don't think I have a high tolerance with going slowly, so I am not sure how I reconcile these images which are more careful and exacting.
The images seem to favour a bold but slightly desaturated colour palette. Dark blacks/ink also seems to feature here and there. I see lots of blocks of colour, using shapes to convey information. They are not painterly in the sense that brush strokes don't seem to be prominent, and if I were to try and pain some of the images without linework I would guess that the best way for me to achieve their quality would be to use gouache or acrylic-gouache to do so.
Whilst the colours seem flat, there is a quality of texture to the images. This is particularly true of those rendered in watercolour. This makes me happy as I want to improve my painting skills as well as drawing. I didn't feel I was drawn to too much trendiness, and I think all of the images have an elegance and classiness that would allow them to stand changes in preferences and trends.
A lot of the images feel like they are telling a story, and would be useful for editorial or publishing purposes. I am curious as to how these artists might approach other uses like reportage, would their styles adapt?
Conclusions
I have really enjoyed taking the time to do these reflections. I do still feel a big sense of anxiety, as I still don't feel like I have some fundamentals down. I would like to be able to work traditionally and digitally, but I don't think my skills in both are where I want them to be. Particularly when I work digitally I end up using techniques that would feel more at home in animation or concept art / character design. This seems to be where a lot of digital art is focussed on. While impressive, I get a feeling that this area of illustration might not be for me.
The main feeling I get when I look at what this says of my taste is that there is tension. There is something to say. There is something I think that I want to say. But I don't know what that is yet. When I look at the musical tastes they all seem to be artists that want to say something, too. There is something in the pit of my stomach telling me I need to let my voice be heard. It also tells me I am terrified to do so.
How do I go about letting go? How do I start to really express myself over looking for acceptance and praise?
References
Doctor Who, "Blink", (2007). [TV programme] BBC One: BBC.
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