As an artist, I think the biggest challenge is not in the technical things—from colour theory to rendering—but rather in living up to our own expectations. We always have such high expectations: We want to draw on a certain level or in a certain style, and want to end up with a piece that is amazing, mindblowing, perfect, and everything we ever dreamed of.
And when we think about the idea and it only exists in our heads yet, then it seems to be the greatest idea ever fabricated. It will be amazing! Moreover, this will be our big breakthrough!
And that lasts until we start to work on it. Because sooner or later things are not working as we want to.
Not every time with every piece. But to me, when I am really into an idea I start to… over-idolize it, I start to expect too much from it and as I keep working on it and it is not living up to the image in my head things turn sour.
I hate it when that happens. When I expect too much from myself, I cannot just enjoy the process and focus on the wrong things - like why this does not look like I imagined it, instead of enjoying the process. Because it is so easy to forget the final outcome rarely if ever looks exactly like we imagined it and it is also easy to hate the process, the final outcome and eventually ourselves too. And to think we are less as an artist.
It happened to me very recently and the funny thing is, it wasn’t even about something super important, like a commission. It was personal art. A HARPG (Horse Art Roleplaying) event entry and I planned to make an easy-going piece in an easier style and fun was my main goal. And things went well - I started sketching, had an idea I loved, I saw this idea very clearly in my mind’s eye, I knew where I wanna go with it. And this was the point when things started to take a turn - my thinking started to change. Because if this one will be really good - then why not put it into my portfolio? I wanted to try out different things with this piece, from storytelling through composition to a new style and thought it could be a good portfolio piece as well.
If it will be good.
And this rogue idea, just a side note, started to shift focus from having fun to “this has to be good, have to be amazing because I want to put it into my portfolio!”
The event I was drawing for was a Halloween-inspired one, so I wanted to have spooky vibes and I love bones, so eventually sketched a unicorn skeleton army chasing my unicorn, wide shot, fake-screenshot piece. But I didn’t consider important things, such as:
how long it will take to line this piece: even with shortcuts, drawing all the skeletons will be a tedious job and it will take a lot out of me
I never drew a fake screen-shot or a heavily comic-inspired piece with thick ink lines and the not painterly colouring style
I don’t even read various comics
I literally had no idea about the background that I also had to line, so that will be also time-consuming
And had no real idea about my colours or lighting setting. All I knew was I wanted a red light.
This wouldn’t even be a real problem - a personal, fun piece, doesn’t need to be perfect. But ever since I wanted to put this one in my portfolio, suddenly it had to be perfect. And expecting to do exceptionally well with things I have zero or limited experience with is straightforward stupid.
I felt the problems creeping up on me during line arting. Those skellies really tortured me, even if I traced the general pose and proportions - gasp, I know! Blasphemy! Chill, tracing is not evil, it can be a shortcut, will talk about it in another post - but detailing them and mixing some things up, because I drew one skelly, then copy-pasted them and changed leg and head positions, that took me massive hours. And it was also boring AF. I lost the drive when I realized I also had a BG to draw and had no idea what to draw and then what colours I wanna use.
Originally I wanted a dark blue night piece with red light. But this would be my… maybe 5th dark blue night with a red light setting I painted this year and I didn’t want to repeat the same concept all over again. But what do I want if not the blue and red pairing? And how do I want it? I had no answer to those questions, so I put the whole project in the freezer.
And that is a dangerous territory to enter because putting a WIP on ice is basically you telling them “We will meet again!” but deep down you know it is a hardcore never. You won't meet again. Ever. Not in this life or the next, never. But I still loved the idea, the event and I love the breed - therefore I wanted to finish it.
And oh my, this was a horrible painting experience. I didn't know what colours I wanted, or how I should even pick my colours for a simpler, comic-inspired piece - I had refs from comic artists and I saw they make super smart colour choices, but… I am not perfect with colours. And having those refs when I am not confident also meant, I wanted to draw like those experienced comic artists. But I am not them, not drawing in their style or even medium and when you try to force a shoe on yourself that doesn’t fit, that never ends well. And it didn’t end well for me either. I finished the piece a day before the deadline, but it looked like this - and I hated it. I knew my values were off and my colours had a problem, but besides that, I couldn’t figure out what the exact problem of the piece was. It wasn’t details - the core problem was different and if I cannot find that first and I try to cover it with details, that won’t work. Been there, did that. Never worked.
The best thing I can do these times is just leave it. It isn’t worth trying to save the piece if I don’t know how to save it. And giving it enough time, when the disappointment in myself fades and I can keep my emotional distance from the piece I see the solution much clearer. Funnily enough, it usually happens at night, just before I fall asleep and totally zoned out, so I keep a small notebook on my night self because if I don’t write it down it keeps bugging me and I cannot sleep. Or fall asleep and forget by the morning.
And it hit me this time too: yes, my values are a bit off, because even though the values logic says things get fainter as they go in the distance - my distance is dark. This is a dark forest and I didn’t put any light source in my BG - that was intentional, I almost always put a light source on my BG and wanted to try it out once when I didn’t do that. So, my values in the background will be blue-er and darker. Not as dark to create contrast, it will fade into dark blue. But this was my smaller problem.
I need more colour variations. That alone will make the piece interesting – I don't need details, like hyper-detailed grass and super strong lights - I need colour variations! On the bones and on the grass. That won’t make my piece that boring.
And I need contrast in my foreground - that means the skeletons. That I could do by:
making the skellies darker, but as someone who owns several skulls, I know bones are not dark. And these skellies are old, nature-cleaned bones - they are probably white. But a light beige at most. I didn’t want to turn them dark.
or I can create more contrast on them and also make them not darker, but more saturated
I went with the second solution. I re-inked them with a bolder black brush usage and pulled their saturation up, also ran through them with a colour jitter brush. Did changes in the background too. Painted some blue hues on it as well.
But something was still off. And it took me some time to realize what - my background lighting wasn’t in tune with my light setting.
My light comes from the upper right corner, falls on the skellies, but also falls on my unicorn as well. And my unicorn is 95% white. And white has this crazy thing, that reflects light back and it is easy to make glow. Basically, I have a light source on my pic: Tonfall himself is my light yours! So he has an effect on the BG that I missed.
At this point, I was pretty tired of the piece, so I really hastily just loosely painted some extra, overall shadows on the piece and finally felt like it was done. Is it perfect? Hell no. But is it good enough? Yes, definitely.
Sometimes, it feels like everything we do is just wrong and we fail and we are disappointed in ourselves. But in reality, we are doing half as bad as we think we do - we just need a moment to take our breath, rest our brain and eyes and return to the piece later. If you are not forcing it, not trying to solve everything in one sitting and especially not trying to fix a piece when you don’t know what the problem is with it, probably you will figure things out what could be better or what needs to be fixed. It also helps if you are asking for a critique or just asking an artist friend who has not worked on the piece for hours now and has a fresh pair of eyes on what they think, and how this piece could be done better.
And no, a piece will probably never look exactly how we imagined it - our expectations are always higher than our actual skillset. So don’t even stress about it. Rather focus on the fun, on creating and just enjoy the process. And do not try to draw like someone else. Do you. Sometimes it is hard to accept my style is not the style I see on other art pieces that someone else did. Because I want a piece like theirs. But I am not them.
Did this piece get in my portfolio? No, because I am not that happy with it. But do I like it, even if I hated it a day ago? Yes, I do and that alone is a big achievement. (And just a fun thing: after I uploaded this one online all I got was just love and cheering - looks like this is one of the more successful pieces that I draw this year. Personally, I don’t think it is because oh-so-technically perfect. It is because of the idea behind it, because this one has a smol story. How perfectly painted it is or how perfect the colours are not that important at all. The idea is, the story is, the vibes are. So, just draw! The technique will come with time. But the ideas - those are your task to come up with.)
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