Reassessing my old artwork
So something I need to do is start to go through my old art and begin to focus on what I thought was successful, interesting, engaging, and maybe something that I'd like to duplicate in the future. Obviously going through every single image would take a very long time, so I've pulled out only a few of my personal favorites.
There was a brief period a few years ago when I began to experiment with watercolor on cardstock. The images, I feel, are somewhat dated and not my best, but there was a feeling of discovery and art making joy that I had rarely felt otherwise. I would get up in the morning thrilled to think that I continue on with my next picture. I loved the work and loved to work on it. I'd like to recapture that. The sea dragon was my first, followed by these others:
Not very impressive image-wise. They're a little static and the color is not great. For some reason, though, they remain some of my most popular and requested images at cons. Maybe they reflect my art joy, despite being pretty flawed.
What I'm wondering is, what was it these images had that I can find again which made them so interesting to work on? And my answer is most likely the dysfunctional method I used to make them. Instead of building up the image from the bottom, working on each layer, bringing it all up as a coherent whole, I piece-mealed it, working from some point and just painting away at whatever I felt like.
This is generally seen as the Wrong Way. It breeds inconsistency and often pieces of the image don't agree with the rest. It LOOKS piece-meal. But for some reason, my creative energies seem to vibe very strongly with the piece-meal method.
So my big problem is how to merge the two methods to create an image which is coherent and finished but which I also actually enjoy working on. And honestly, I think I already know the answer, and that is just to go at it in my piece-meal, jolly-jig way and to treat that as an underpainting of sorts so that I can then go in and fix things and bring it all together. It might be a little back-asswards but if that's the way I most enjoy making artwork, that should be the way I make it. It's a helluvalot more useful to me than doing it the 'correct' way and being disengaged and bored with every step of it.
There is a kind of art zone you drift into when you're really enjoying what you're doing. It's a lot like transcendental meditation. When you find it, you can feel your perception having changed. But like transcendental meditation, which I'm extremely poor at, I seem always to drag myself out of my art zone, telling myself that I'm 'doing it wrong' and have to work harder to work correctly. I think I need to just get in the groove and listen to my anti-intellectual art jones more, and then after I've done a sizeable amount of work, to step back and reevaluate to plan my next steps. Which is really the true 'right way' but which I haven't discovered my rhythm for yet.
My problem is that I want to get things done fast fast, do them right the first time and not have to go in to reevaluate. It's a very nasty habit and really is the big one I hope to break, keeping this journal. My goal is to find the things that I really want to work with, whether it's subject matter, materials, habits, and once I'm thoroughly engaged will hopefully slow down naturally and begin to pour over and finish work instead of brushing it aside half finshed for the next thing.
More reassessing old artwork on the way. Right now I yet have commission obligations which need to be met.