SmART School Week 4

Whoops, I'm writing about last week's class literally while sitting in this week's class.

So what I brought to class last week was more prepwork, gearing up for the jump to paint.

I'd done that set of color studies for the mid-week critique, and gotten some good feedback from Rebecca about how I was losing my value structure in pursuit of these colors I had in my head. The solo study was done larger, so I could zone in a little more on what I was trying to do. I also got the drawing on the board and scrubbed in a value study.

However!

I also brought something completely different into class!

This has nothing to do with Belle Dame Sans Merci. But that weekend previous, as I was sitting in a lecture at Illuxcon on September 20th, I got an email enquiry about doing a cover for an ebook release of a book. The enquirer was the book's author, Elizabeth Bear, and the deadline for the cover going live was October 4th.

I did thumbnails that day and got one approved, and did my drawing on the day after I returned from Allentown, and I brought it to class because I had gone from nothing to a final drawing in less than four days and just knew the panic was affecting my judgement. 

I'm going to make a separate post about the process of this cover, but I just want to say that I could have wept with gratitude over the critique I got. I went from a drawing that is a bunch of poor decisions stitched together awkwardly, with a figure who was just miles away from the mark, to.... well, I'm sitting here with a finished painting waiting for one last critique round, aren't I? :D

SmART School Week 3

You know when is the best time to post about a class? The night before the next one, just at midnight.

Anyway!

I ran myself into a bit of a corner this week. I needed the full, finished drawing for Rebecca, which meant I needed a full model shoot... which I couldn't rangle until that Friday. That Friday was also the opening for the Spectrum exhibit at the Society of Illustrators, and then Saturday was Art Out Loud, and then Sunday and Monday I had work. So I had a bit of a sprint at the end!

Here's the photo comp that I put together and projected onto my paper, as the base for the drawing:

Beautiful, right? Haha... anyway. About 90% of that comes from my own photos, with the tree in there from my sketch, and the skirt composited from a couple of different images. No armor on the lower figure, and the wrong legs, both of which I referenced separately because it was honestly easier at that point.

Here's the final drawing that I took to class!

I was seriously expecting to get killed this week, since here was where I needed to have solved every inch of the image in preparation for the painting. Instead, this is the paintover I got:

This class is forcing me to come to terms with the fact that I'm operating at a level where I should be trusting myself. I will never get it perfect, but after three consecutive weeks of critique that involves things being pushed, not fixed, I need to start sitting down each time to work without the nagging anxiety in the back of my head that maybe it's all been a fluke and this is the day it stops. It's not just SmART School that's giving me this push to change my outlook - the IMC supports it, as does this past weekend at Illuxcon.

I definitely am still in a position where I have a whoooole lot to learn, but you know, I'm no longer a college student making college student work. I have a vision and a voice that I'm developing, I have definite technical strengths that I am gaining more and more confidence in tapping into, and my weaknesses are being worked on with each new piece.

Though, I mean, it's not like it's ever going to be not humbling to have Rebecca Guay have minimal crit for a drawing of mine.

SmART School Week 2

The run up to week two saw me kind of miserable - not because of overall miserableness, or because I was disappointed in the thumb chosen, but because all I had to bring in was one sketch. I mean, it was all I was supposed to bring in, but it just din't seem like enough. I whined to my long-suffering roommates on this very subject for the entire process of drawing this.

I was braced to apologize for my lack of work... but then class came and actually Rebecca loved it. (My notes for class included, "!!!" in several different spots.) There wasn't a lot of critique to give (??!) because, as Rebecca said, the final drawing was where she was going to nail me to the wall over every detail, whereas the sketch was only really good to show my composition, value, and gesture. 

Here's her paintover, with some noodling with the idea of a translucent dress. All I basically have to fix are some gestures that can be made better, and some tangents.

Let me tell you, I was kind of taken aback. I'm a few years past the bad artistic self-regard issues I had from college, but it still leaves me a bit bewildered to present a sketch I think of as a sad minimum and receive praise, encouragement, and minimal things to fix. Next to some of those !!!s were ???s, haha.

(I also brought some studies to class. The dress ones were kind of worthless, but the armor was definitely worthwhile.)

My drawing is due tomorrow. Let's see how that goes, yeah?

SmART School Week 1

Well, my next class is in two days, so clearly now is the time to talk about the first class? Hah.

I was in the middle of a crash during my run-up and preparation, which was crap timing. I still got everything I wanted done, though: full thumb set, four thumbs picked, enlarged, and cleaned up, one picked and sketched out tighter, and some color studies put together.

Having been to the IMC three times, Rebecca knows who I am and who I want to be as an artist. It was really interesting to watch her process of getting to know the students who were new to her - the project that she'd assigned to them was brilliant for the purpose, and gave a lot of insight into the individuals - but I was really gratified when she was able to just jump into working on my piece.

Essentially, the thumb I'd picked was undoable without having my actual model sit on an actual horse. It was disappointing - I'd really fallen in love with the gesture - but I need to be more aware of the actual contraints I have in the way I work. We went with number 4 as the alternate, and she pointed out things that I should know, like, pick one character to halo, and, the shape of things is incredibly important when using silhouettes.

Here's the paintover.

This is a not-very-good writeup of a class that actually went for about 3 and a half hours, I know. Partially at fault is how long it took me to get around to writing things down; partially, the lessons from this week were things about care and deliberateness that are hard to talk about at length because it really is all about getting a feel for visual rhythm, and putting in the time to make it speak.

Mostly, though, I find it hard to be enthusiastic at the moment because I'm frustrated that I have to stay at sketch- and study-phase until I can align my schedule with my models' and get a real shoot together. I waaaaant to paaaaint, but that's probably two weeks off at the earliest ):

IMC 2014 (kinda)

I came back from my third IMC almost two months ago, so I think it's time to admit that this isn't going to be a proper post about it: there's been too much time, and too much distance. What this is a post about, now, is evolution - and how miserable I currently am.

First things first: evolution.

The last thing I finished before the masterclass was a crowning testament to rendering as I approach it, which is to say, fiddly and tediously.

I'm proud of accomplishing what I did, but it was also a breathtaking waste of time and effort. In the nine months (minus some time off here or there) it took me just to paint those mosaic tiles, I could have done so many other paintings. But I went ahead and I did what I did, and I think it was important.

Because what I did at the IMC, fresh from most of a year of toiling over one painting's rendering and tiny detailing, was this:

It's hard to see from that image, but that is a painting of brush strokes. I didn't sit and noodle on one square inch; even the hands were done with care, as opposed to obsessive fiddling.

This was not a conscious change I made in my approach. Something clicked during Greg Manchess' lecture: the first thing I did upon returning to my easel was crop the top off the head in my already-approved final drawing, and it went from there. It honestly sometimes felt like my hand making these marks while I watched, bewildered - and for someone whose technique has always had a lot to do with her control issues, it was terrifying.

My little freakout over new painting method aside ("Jenna, it looks good." "I know, but how am I doing it?"), this is a breakthrough almost on the level of that time I was slapped out of some hardcore internalized self-worth issues from college. This is good and this is important and the paintings I have done since the IMC have been faster and better and more confident than anything I've done before.

Which brings us to the 'being miserable' part, actually.

As most people who'll probably read this know, I work at Starbucks. I was a barista for about two years, and I feel pretty safe in saying that I was a good one. For months, I was turning down a promotion to supervisor: I knew that it would be a huge stress jump, and a huge time commitment, and that it would wrest a lot of my focus from my art. But I wound up taking it shortly before the IMC, because the money was good, I knew I'd be good at it, and I was already doing half of the job anyway... and, again, control issues.

To absolutely no one's surprise, the transition wiped me out. Combined with it being summer - which is not only the three months where I am baseline tired, angry, and generally unwell because of the heat, but also simultaneously Starbucks' busy season and invariably short-staffed - the new responsibility and intensity made it an uphill battle to make art.

I was telling myself comforting things about preferring it to a desk job (true, depending on the day and also which desk job), and how it wouldn't be for too long (hah), and how I was fine, really, everything was going well (no). This worked pretty well, actually, until I went to the IMC.

The thing about that week up in Amherst is that, for me, it strips away everything. There's not really any room for anything but the art. It's hard to describe - it's not like it's a silent monastery of pure art-making, not at all, but even the silliest, booziest night spent hanging out in the dorm common room had an underlying connection to art.

Faced with a week of the life I want distilled into its best parts, all of my little white lies and half-truths about being alright were torn away.

I hate not being an artist in profession as well as in practice. I hate having to choose where to spend what time I'm not at Starbucks - I hate feeling like every time I decide to see a friend or, god forbid, take a day off, I am choosing to not make art. I hate being caught in a grey area between two directions which are not mutually exclusive but cannot both be worked toward at the same time, and I hate feeling like I'm spinning my wheels as a result. I hate how I need every painting to be A Step Forward, and I hate how when I sit back and do a study I feel like I'm wasting time. I hate being too exhausted to make art and then spend the time not making art hating myself.

I hate looking at Starbucks and seeing the looming shadow of a career.

I hate looking at art and feeling the niggling doubt: Maybe it's a mirage. Maybe I've just been fooling myself.

Listen: I'm not looking for reassurances or advice. This is the year that I was accepted into Spectrum, this is the year I sold my first major piece, this is a year of a big technical breakthrough. I know that people like - respond to - my art, and there are those who are just waiting for me to hit it. I know I'm young, that I only just this May hit two years out of school, that I am doing a lot of things right.

I know that there are issues here, and I'm getting help on that front.

I'm also doing what I can to throw myself into art in such a way as to make it impossible for me to withdraw. My SmART School class with Rebecca Guay starts in less than a week, and there's the Society of Illustrators Spectrum exhibit opening and then Art Out Loud the day after, and Illuxcon less than a week later. I have projects for myself lined up, and promotions to do.

I'm not actually drowning - but it sure feels awful all the same.

This fall, I'm going to try to be better about posting here, because writing down what I'm experiencing has been incredibly helpful in the past - and looking back over my journey gives me guideposts to steer by. Even writing this, tonight, helps, and while I still dread tomorrow's 3:30am alarm and eight hours of work and exhaustion, I'm not quite so wrapped up in my anticipatory misery.

And I really am excited to show everyone what I'm doing. That doesn't change, even if the path gets harder.

I know I'm tightly-wound, but it's gotten ridiculous

I've come to the conclusion recently that I need to seriously reassess my work habits.

The whole driving myself into the ground thing is not new or different, and I have, I swear, been making progress with it in the past year or two. I know I say 'I'm going to fix this' every time I scrape myself off the floor after a crash; I go on Facebook and post about how tired I am, how much I hate doing this to myself, and maybe crack a few jokes at my own expense. But I was talking to a friend of mine toward the end of my most recent push, and she said something that really made me pause: "It seems like you're, well, a little too proud of being able to do as much work as you do."

And, you know, it's true. The most common theme I hear in others' description of me - the thing repeated most often when I got into Spectrum - is how much of a hard worker I am. It's something I've been proud of for a long time, especially considering this is a skill I developed over years rather than an innate ability. I still consider it a strength, how hard I work, how much I can take on: I went from mediocre to good fast enough that everyone remarked on it my senior year of college.

I think I'm entitled to being proud, given all of that, but the problem is that some point during those four years of 'working hard', it got twisted up.

My junior year, as I've talked about before, was a really rough time; I overcommitted badly, and was constantly either working or hating myself viciously for not working. It planted the idea that if I wasn't busy, I was doing something wrong. It didn't seem like a bad thing, really: by the second semester of senior year I'd leveled up to a degree I hadn't even thought possible, and I was outputting a finished painting every two and a half to three weeks.

But I graduated, and I crashed. It took me months to claw my way out of being depressed and self-loathing: "I was useless; I was a waste of the potential that teachers and role models said they saw in me," I wrote three months after graduating, looking back on the summer I'd just spent barely making art. I was back on my feet properly that winter, juggling projects and once again pleased (proud) at how hard I was working - and then I crashed again that spring, depressed again, furious at my own failings and lack of progress.

I've repeated this pattern so many times that I've gotten good at compensating for them. I don't get depressed any more, not really - I mostly get exhausted, as I drive myself to the finish line on nothing but grit teeth. I stack projects and deadlines and drive myself through 100+ hour weeks between working at Starbucks and art. I negotiate with myself and compromise in order to 'okay' spending time with friends, or on dates; I have very limited time I'm 'allowed' to watch TV or goof off on the internet.

And reading that paragraph over, I have to admit I'm giving myself some narrowed eyes.

Part of the problem is that I do have a lot of work to do (a long way to go), and only so much time in a week to do it. Part of it is that I spent so long being so aware of how mediocre I was, and something in me will always be running from that, pushing as hard as I can to overcome it. Part of it is that habits are hard to break, and it feels straight-up wrong to not be very busy. Part of it is that I do, actually, work optimally with one painting in-progress on the easel, one drawing in-progress on the paper, and one illustration in thumbnail stage or rolling around in my head.

It's got to change, though. I just hate being tired, and the last downswing was nothing but tired, for two straight months. When MoCCA ended, I was flat-out exhausted and still had to show up at Starbucks for another five days straight... but after two days of just relaxing when I came home, instead of going to my studio, I found myself sort of shocked to discover how refreshed I was feeling. I've spent an entire week and a half since ~*not doing anything*~, and I keep laughing at how much of a revelation it is that, as a result, I'm incredibly rested and relaxed.

Going forward, I still have a lot to do, but I am going to have to put some effort into maintenance and care this time around. If we're talking about time and amount of work, I can't afford these crashes and the aftercare that they require; a little less detachedly, I really need to be less destructive in my work habits.

There is a middle road between not doing enough and driving myself into the ground with overwork - I know this, because I see others walk it. I need to find it for myself, because for all of my advancement, I'm at the point where I don't really benefit from a whip at my heels, or self-flagellation.

Groping after an explanation

I've come to be pretty confident in my artistic voice, but when I was recently asked to go past my favorite joke ("I paint sad flowy ladies.") and the usual followup ("I paint the quiet things: internal drama and subtle emotions of the figures in the stories I love."), I found myself going in rambling, vague circles which boiled down to "????"

So, having put some thought to the question, it is time to think aloud (aka write it down), because wow it is hard to pin down.

How do I put my art into words?

There is a definite theme and direction, I know that much. There's something about pain and beauty and  humanity and femininity, and there it is: but how do I actually verbalize it? It's not a 'something', it's a definite thing, but I dance around locking onto it constantly.

There is beauty to be found in pain, in sorrow and grief, and there's beauty in quiet moments, too. My art is about these intersections, and especially in those things in the context of overlooked narratives within known stories, but it's more than that. So many times, women are subjects told about and acted upon but not explored, even when the stories are technically about them. I keep looking at these isolated, simplified figures through the context of their humanity, the emotion I read in their actions and choices, and celebrate their beauty and strength and tragedy (or attempt to).

There really is something arresting about all the things not said, but implied, by these narratives I find myself drawn to. We know Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds, but why, after all those months? We know Guinevere was unfaithful, but what did she feel for the husband she betrayed? We know the girl without hands forged her path from the great unknown, but from where did the strength come to take herself from those places of danger with such self-possession?

I want to ask these questions, strip from them the gloss of storytelling disassociation, but still make sure that these women are celebrated no less for being reassessed as mere mortals - their untouchable nature is not what holds my interest, but their beauty in the midst of their human struggles and weaknesses.

(I think I'm getting close to finding the right words for my art, but it's still quite rambly. I need to be able to speak both succinctly and in-depth about this, and right now I have neither. I feel like I'm circling the point from a height - I'm no longer doing a haphazard fly-by, but I still need to close the gap.)