Rawwwr

Some days I wake up and I'm five years old.  I lose my weariness and find the pure joy of just being.  The simple enchantment of creation and play remind me.  This is why I art {yes, I'm using that as a verb.  I'm five, and when you're so young you get to make up vocabulary, it's one of those unwritten-yet-irrefutable Laws of the Universe that apply solely to children.  Duh}.

[Found him here.  Alternate color-it-yourself version here.]

It Started with a Sketch

Wings & Words

More watercolor sketching (though I did use some pencil under this one).  The background is a pale green wash that doesn't show up in photos.

 "All art is always created from a base of someone else’s work. There is no 'new.' No one invents art. You always have a base of someone you’re—I can’t think of any other word to use—you’re *copying* them even if you don’t remember it. It might be Picasso, it might be Michelangelo’s finger, it might be Da Vinci’s earlobe…but you’ll remember it. That’s the creative process: you look at things and you’re impressed by it, and your job then is to show it to others and say, 'I like this, look at this.' Or, 'I hate this, look at this.' That’s what the artistic
life is all about."
Ed Emberley

Ritual

{Chapter 2: Rituals of Preparation}

"It's vital to establish some rituals ... at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way." 

"A painter I know can't do anything in her studio without propulsive music pounding out of the speakers.  Turning it on turns on a switch inside her.  The beat gets her into a groove.  It's the metronome for her creative life.

...there is no one ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it.  To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming." 

"This, more than anything else, is what rituals of preparation give us: They arm us with confidence and self-reliance."

"When I walk into the white room I am alone, but I am alone with my: 

body

ambition

ideas

passions

needs

memories

goals

prejudices

distractions

fears

These [are] at the heart of who I am.  Whatever I'm going to create will be a reflection of how these have shaped my life, and how I've learned to channel my experiences into them.  

Distractions and fears [are] the habitual demons that invade the launch of every project."

"When you have selected the environment that works for you, developed the start-up ritual that impels you forward every day, faced down your fears, and put your distractions in their proper place, you have cleared the first hurdle.  You have begun to prepare."

---------------- 

{Exercises}
1  Where's your "Pencil"?
What is your pencil?  What is the one tool that feeds your creativity and is so essential that without it you feel naked and unprepared?

2  Build up your tolerance for solitude

3  Face your fears

4  Give me one week without

White Room

This morning I picked up Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit at the public library.  I'm only through the first chapter and finding it encouraging and insightful.  The core message is nothing new, it can be summed up to the classic "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration"; however, it breaks the "perspiration" part down into pieces and then gives exercises to work through.

I Recommend You Learn to Cook

Carla Speed McNeil on self-publishing:

I moved my game to Dark Horse because I am one.

I’ve been a self-publisher for a long time. I highly recommend it. Think of it (as you learn to live on beans and ramen) as an apprenticeship in our business. When you self-publish, you learn to create your own work method. You have to learn what gets you out of bed and away from the game console, the whole season of Stargate from Netflix, the big pile of comics you haven’t read yet, the day job, the significant other, the messy mind that talks you out of working like an anorexic’s mind talks her out of eating. You go through a process that teaches you what can and should be put aside for later or brutally pruned off your life so that you can get your work done consistently. That is the absolute baseline. And you have to do it, because there are gonna be things that cannot be put aside. A family is basically another day job, one you can’t quit once you start. You may find yourself caring for sick parents, a sick spouse, or even sick you; learning how to get the work done in spite of the things you simply must take care of is where you start. I recommend you learn to cook. Beans get to look mighty ugly after a while. I learned to make port-wine reductions living in an efficiency apartment with no kitchen—just an electric skillet and a hot plate.

The Making of Anya's Ghost

From verabee's journal:

" Anya’s Ghost is my first book. Consequently everything I did was a bit trial and error. Maybe wasn’t the most efficient way to get the job done, but it worked for me.I didn’t work from a script. When I write the art and the dialogue come at the same time and one suggests the other; it’s really hard for me just to come up with dialogue onto a blank computer page. I try to show more than tell with my comics and that seems to work best starting with thumbnails rather than attempting to get it across in a script. I did work up an outline for the entire story and plotted it out very carefully, but I let each scene form itself in thumbnails with the dialogue being written as I drew. I’ll run you through a process of some sample pages from writing to drawing to final color. "

Read more here.

Once Upon a Dream