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Art is not magic.

Started by Noelle, May 11, 2010, 11:11:33 PM

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Noelle

THIS BLOG IS IMAGE-INTENSIVE.

This is a blog about progress. Art is not made by magic. It doesn't come easily, and it's never right the first time. It is not a connect-the-dots and it is not like scribbling in a coloring book.
I've come to understand that a huge majority of people don't understand any of these concepts, and frankly, have no clue as to how exactly art is MADE or the way it evolves from start to finish.

For me, process is the most important and most interesting part -- and I'd like to show you that.

This is a piece that I have been working on for several weeks. It has kept me company while I worked on putting up a gallery show that consumed all my life, and it is slowly rekindling my creativity again afterward. It's not finished, maybe never will be, but it's always under construction.















Step 1: The sketch stage.





This didn't last long -- I decided for this particular piece, I was just going to jump in and start painting.





Laying down basic colors; I was just getting a feel at this point for what I wanted to do as far as color palette. I use a lot of color theory in my work, so I decided to choose a split complement -- Shades of red/orange and blue. It's not a perfect split (more of an analogous + complement), but it's close enough for my aims.





Here, I'm gradually working over my lines, which, until then, had been separate from my actual paint. You can see in the layers bar that I have an extra copy of the sketch saved in case I completely fuck it up.





I did a little reconstruction of the facial features here -- it'll happen a few more times.





A closeup of the prior step.





Decided I'd extend the image and start including a body. This was only supposed to be a quick little paint to get my creativity going, but I decided to run with the idea.





Face is still under construction, but the body is starting to get some definition.



Maaaajor reconstruction being done to the face. Her features seem off to me, too 'chubby' for the character I'm going for.



More definition added in the body, and the face is stiiiiiillll under construction. I've jacked up the contrast in her skin tone a bit, mostly just in the torso, and am slowly scribbling in more of her body.



Closeup; 100% view of the paintwork. Yayyyy.




The most important tool an artist has is the ability to learn and change.

Wistful Dream

I very much agree with everything you've said here. Learning and changing, not only yourself but a piece sometimes is really important. And if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted, hell, it might be better. One thing I've really learned this semester is to work quick and loose blocking in things and then work all over the piece, which you seem to do, rather then just fixating on one thing, say the nose and getting it to a point where you don't/won't want to change a thing. Its helped me a lot. Thank you for sharing this :) I look forward to more.

Jude

When you finish you need to include a picture of you tearing it up at the end to represent how you hate all of your art a week after you've done with it.

(p.s. nice blog entry)