Hey, there sports fans! Al here with the latest:
The Darkside of Creativity, the hell you say?
Let me fill you in on the context.
As I was working on my latest “Out of Left Field” idea a thought occurred to me - does a person’s creativity have a “Darkside”? I know saying that out loud sounds silly. But it doesn't invalidate the question any less.
Personally ( I will use “I statements”) I think we as artists do have a dark side when it comes to this topic.
In particular, I am talking about illustrators.
In times past I have known a slew of much better creators and illustrators than myself. This isn't a slam on me but you can tell when somebody just has the right stuff that polished look to their work.
They could just render much better than I. But they always tripped themselves up by reworking a single piece over and over again getting caught up in the minutiae... and never stop.
There have been two specific instances that come to mind in this. The first one was a friend of mine who had just gotten photoshop and was going in and talking about the inking down to one pixel at a time. He was thinking that he could just keep going and going down literally into the subatomic level. Quantum Physics was just not happening here. He didn't get it. The other friend of mine was obsessed with doing an open invitation doing a cover for the band Korn. He just repainting the same figure over and over again. He was never happy with what he saw. And hence he never completed or turned it in.
Now part of me knows exactly how that feels, you get caught up (again) in the minutia of detail and technique rather than keep going to push a story forward.
And the artist at times can come very close to capturing reality BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Because the art reflects the artist within themselves. But we all get caught up in the technique which looks great on paper but doesn't push that narrative forward.
Here is a really interesting part, as stories are written and illustrated there comes a point where you just stop working because the creativity monkey wants something new to do. That monkey needs to be fed. And it needs to be fed often. It, the feeling, I will equate to a functioning alcoholic - needing some liquor at some part of the day. And you have to keep illustrating something sometimes anything. And I will say this to you if you know any artist well and they haven't done any work for a while they get cranky and mean.
Just like not getting fed.
For me, at first, I thought that I was just sidetracking myself. Finding a convenient way of getting out of finishing the story I was still working on. No, that wasn't the problem. That story was already done in my mind. The problem I had was with it was the detail. The need the monkey wants has to keep it somewhat engaged. Onto the next big challenge. The next story to be rendered and hopefully quickly.
That is why I started working on "Strange Space". To feed the monkey.