For the last quarter of 2022, I was mainly working on pieces for the show, Headspace, which opened in January 2023. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much time to fuss over paintings, and it brought out some unique qualities in my work.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert said in her 2009 TED talk regarding the creative process:
"I'm a mule, and the way that I have to work is I have to get up at the same time every day, and sweat and labor and barrel through it really awkwardly."
I often feel the same, toughing through pieces and fighting against each creative hurdle as if it’s a new and unexpected challenger. Whether it was the result of recent trips into the iterative process of digital art, or from the extra time allotted, my work became more conversational than usual.
I found it interesting, so I thought writing down some of the details could be a fun way to explore the creative process. I find decision making to be an almost physically taxing endeavor, and through art I get the chance to stretch those action-oriented muscles in a place of fantasy.
The piece I’m highlighting here is “Cooling Off”. The concept for this piece was actually the idea that spurred the entire theme of my pieces for the show. The thumbnail is featured here:
Creating a Concept
I initially struggled with the show’s theme of “Mental Health” because I had this strange limiting thought that anything related to mental health HAD to be dark and brooding and serious and that just didn’t feel like me. So I struggled and over analyzed and conceptualized WAY too hard. Eventually I became so frustrated I decided to let my mind mull it over while I went about daily life.
Eventually, while irritable, I had this daydream about my head being so hot that it was steaming. These little negative thoughts in my head must love that, huh? A little bit of cozy steam and warm fury to keep them nice and toasty. And BOOM there was the idea. Little alien men taking advantage of my frustration – harnessing the power of my overworked brain to heat their Cosmic Jacuzzi.
I really only focused on the idea of the hot tub, so things like “What should the body look like” or “What is this environment this takes place in” didn’t occur to me until later in the process.
So I transferred my ideas onto the larger canvas and began to work. I got to this point and told myself I was done. But in my heart… I knew something was awry. The water looked too thick, the steam was forced, the effect of the sky was neat but really didn’t add much, and the turtleneck sweater was so out of place and unexplainable… plus those stairs were just not working. So I instead worked on “A Machine at Rest” and let the visual language spill out effortlessly somehow onto the canvas.
Upon returning to the Hot Tub piece, I realized I needed to have the character actually LIVE in the world I created. I also wanted to add a lot more aliens to push home the idea that these thoughts overwhelm me.
I scrapped the turtle neck and rendered the figure’s full face. I extended the river so it would wrap around the image, attempting to show the figure sitting in the river and covered in water. In the initial ideation for “A Machine at Rest” I had scrapped the idea of aliens in innertubes – so I added them here because it made more sense. I love the idea of an alien lazy river.
I also added UFO’s in the sky to create more visual interest. Overall, I changed the visual language of anything built to more closely resemble the alien hut from “A Machine at Rest.”
Unfortunately there was still a lot that felt awkward here. I decided to add some glasses to the character to break up the space and add more personality. Overall I added more realism but I took away a lot of the bright and cheerful feeling from the original.
But even now – I felt like the water was just not working. It wasn’t selling as water at all, and I loved the way I captured water in the first finished painting. In addition, the skin was now becoming way too purple and dead looking.
Finally Satisfied!
I discovered an insanely fun way to draw water to make it appear more like droplets – and the effect is so exciting to look at. It reminds me of the surface tension water has in space or an anime character sobbing – the water looks almost slimy and gooey. At this point I realized I was finished. This piece taught me a lot about grit. I felt like restarting it so many times, but I am glad that I didn’t. The final piece makes more sense than the initial thumbnail; instead of a hottub scene, it became an entire Alien Waterpark that ran off the heat of my anger.
I still think the steam from the hot tub isn’t obvious enough, but it was difficult to show the steam without covering up a ton of the details.
What I learned from this piece:
- If something is awkward and unexplainable in the thumbnail, resolving it before completing the entire piece is probably a good idea.
- Using a glazing technique is a really quick way to create deep space. I used a thin purple layer of acrylic paint on the canyon details to create more depth.
- When rendering water it’s important to have a sense of transparency as well as a TON of highlights!!
- Typically I scrap pieces that aren’t working in order to “Fail faster”. This piece was a testament to the idea that with enough hard work even an awkward artwork can become something much much more exciting.
- Initially I thought it would look neat to have an acrylic base and then small repetitive linework for the top layer to create a sense of rhythm and movement. However I realized this was essentially like adding sprinkles to a cake without icing. I found that I could actually blend the paint markers, creating a technique that almost appears creamy? Essentially what I learned on this point is that technique will never shine if the base image is awkward and not working.
- I tried to do a stylized drawing at first, but I was running into problems with the face and hand not appearing ‘solid’. I started using a reference image to assist and it ended up elevating the piece a lot. For me the contrast between the realistic human and the little aliens adds a lot of visual interest.