I have a problem when it comes to my artistic projects.  Namely, that very few of them ever happen.  Some of you may remember my "personal art contract" from a previous journal (Personal Art - What I've Learned + New Rules) - yeah, that didn't go anywhere (I have a printed and signed copy hanging on my wall to remind me - it's turned out to be more depressing than anything else).

It's not that I'm short on ideas.  I have plenty of ideas, some of which I would even go so far as saying are damn good ones.  I just don't seem to translate them from "good idea" to "good piece of art".

I'm not being harsh on myself here.  It's not that I think the art I do show here is bad - I think my art is pretty good now, especially compared to earlier work.  Ok, so I'm not the best artist out there, but I'm also not the worst.  The reason it's never at the "good piece of art" stage is because it never leaves the drawing board, though that's probably not the best metaphor to use here since most of the time it doesn't make it to the drawing board in the first place.

And that's where the problem is: I keep my ideas in my head.  Maybe for some ideas I find some reference images, and a few I might go so far as to draw a few thumbnail sketches, but the vast majority of the time, it gets no further than that.

Take for example The Bones of Amanita.  This is one of the rare examples of an image that made it past the thumbnail stage, and then no further (for a while, at least).  It even says right there in the description "I've had the base sketch for this drawn months ago, but hadn't done anything with it for a while."    I had the base sketch drawn in about April of last year, but it took until September for me to get off my lazy ass and do something.  It's not even that it takes a long time: the background research (i.e. finding reference images for the mushroom and the fairy's pose) took 2 hours looking on Google search; sketching out various mushrooms took maybe an hour, the skeleton took another half hour, and composing them together into one image took all of ten minutes.  Then, for some reason, nothing happened for nearly 6 months.  Finally, on a not-at-all-extraordinary day in September, I decided to get back to it, and in just one afternoon the entire thing was painted and finished.

When I really get into something (like painting, sewing, or Skyrim), I can focus on it for hours and hours on end without a break and without realising htat so much time has passed (this often results in forgetting to eat for an entire day, but that's besides the point).  It doesn't even take much to get me to focus on it - I just decide I'm going to do something, and (provided there are no external distractions) that's me lost to the world for a day or two.

So why did it take so long for a fully-drawn base sketch to become a finished painting, when all up it could have taken less than one full day to get from start to finish?  Why was the last decent thing I uploaded way back in November?

I can think of two reasons:
1.  I am a perfectionist.  If I am going to do something, I want it to be done right, even if it being "right" is way beyond my current skill level.  Whenever I think of an idea, I think about exactly what I want it to look, and then I have the problem of knowing there is no way in Hell I'll get it looking like that just yet.  I don't want to go through all the effort to create something I will consider sub-par, even though that is actually the only way to imrpove my art to the level where I CAN make things "right".
2.  I am, fundamentally, lazy.  That's not the whole truth, though for some people that would be all they need to hear.  But the fact is, it's not a very good explanation at all.  Let's look at it this way:  I am not lazy, there are just a bunch of completely useless tasks and activities I fill my day with instead of doing what I should be doing (like Skyrim).  If that doesn't make sense, look at it this way: drawing a picture takes time and effort, and doesn't really give a feeling of success until it is completely finished (for me, at least - other people may feel differently); games like Skyrim also take time, but are filled with "rewards" throughout the entire game, whether it is finding gold in a chest, getting a magic weapon, or finishing a quest - nothing in it can be used in any way, shape or form in the real world, but somehow it feels more successful.

I realised the second one after reading an article on Cracked.com (5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted).  But it's not just video games - it's everything.
Why would I go to a Steampunk convention when I hadn't even started an essay that was due in 3 days later?
Why would I spend hours browsing articles on Cracked instead of sorting out the broken zipper on the skirt my mother asked me to fix two weeks ago?
And why would I spend 2 hours writing a 1443 word journal post on deviantART that people aren't even going to read instead of going to sleep?  (Hell, my essay only had to be 1000 words!)

Why?  Because it feels more rewarding.  It's more "fun."

As I write, I have several art projects underway.  One is the rest of the series of characters that Ghost and Artifice are from (Hell, that's been "underway" since 2010), and has got no further than the images you have already seen (which I will be redoing anyway, when I can be bothered).  Another is a painting that has actually got to the main design stage (meaning I planned out the pose and the costume), but won't be going anywhere for a while.  Yet another idea is a set of Tarot cards, and that has got to the "do a Google search for reference images" stage.  I also have my college fashion design work to do, and that will be getting done because it would be a waste of a years worth of fees and shitloads more money if it didn't.

One of the things I mentioned in Personal Art - What I've Learned + New Rules was that checklists of projects don't work for me.  And they don't - it just doesn't feel rewarding.  I came up with the idea of rewarding myself with a charm for a bracelet when a piece is done, and in theory it works - but it still leaves the problem of not feeling successful until right at the end.

I've decided to try another way of encouraging myself to get artworks done (and by "artworks", I here mean paintings): create a table of current art projects with each column being assigned to a specific stage in the process (such as "thumbnail sketch", reference images search", "character design", "background design", "base sketch", etc. - really basic, easy to follow steps), and as each stage is completed, I check off each square.  It kind of sounds like something a kindergarten teacher would use with their students (rewarding menial things with a sticker on a chart), but perhaps going back to basics will help me.  I'll still be sticking with the charm bracelet thing at the end, but this just gives me a visual cue to remind me I am actually getting somewhere (an it will help me keep track of which projects I've started - another problem with taking so long to do anything is I tend to forget which ones I have started).  It also means I'll have something pinned to my cork-board other than the damned depressing "personal art contract", which I will be getting rid of (yes, I have a cork-board - originally, the plan was to use it as an "inspiration board" with various images and objects pinned to it to help me design things; what it became was a pointless waste of wall-space that happened to have a couple of pictures of Dita Von Teese attached).

So, once again, we'll see how this goes.

Ghost.
~AshenArtifice