Cleaning Up

One of the big frustrations in making cartooning-type drawings is keeping the loose spontaneity of your initial sketch in your finished piece. The images above clearly illustrate how I struggle with this.

In going through my files (A.k.a. the giant pile of papers scattered around my drawing board) I found this page from my sketchbook from a few year's back of everyone's favorite element man, Metamorpho, giving it to everyone's favorite caveman, Java. The drawing was just a quick, mindless scribble, but I liked the loosey-goosey energy, so I decided to do a finished marker drawing of it.

I blew it.

In cleaning up the original sketch on the lightbox, I tightened it up too much, and lost the qualities that I enjoyed in the drawing. Coloring it just made it worse.

It's not the worst drawing in the world, but I wish there was some magic formula to avoid the dillution (is that a word, and if so, did I spell it correctly?).

Oh yeah. There is a magic formula. It's called working on your drawing ability all the time!

Artist's Block!

For a creative person (like I pretend to be), be they a fine artist, cartoonist, writer, songwriter, playwright or even a kid doing a book report, there is nothing as exciting/intimidating as a blank piece of paper.

The possibilities are limitless. You could create a masterpiece that will be celebrated for generations long after your dirt nap, or just scribble around for a few fruitless hours producing a pile of crap.

Call it writer's block, artist's block or whatever, it is a challenge that faces all of us from time to time.

I am having one of those days. The images I see in my head just aren't flowing out onto the paper. I thought venting my frustration by illustrating it might help.

It didn't. Maybe a walk will help. What methods do you creative types out there use to break this block?

The good news is that, like an unloved season, this syndrome goes away for awhile, then you can enjoy a new burst of creative energy.

I think I'll take that walk now.