I was in an art slump for a while and decided to force myself out of it by coming up with a way to grade myself on effort and work on faces and backgrounds (I'm highly grade motivated, just to let you know how huge a nerd I am). I managed to get fifteen faces done and three backgrounds before my little Murphy-inspired personality quirk set in: If I force myself to do an art project, I will suddenly be flooded with art inspiration...for things that are not that project. If I make myself stay on course, I will loose all drive and make cruddy art, but if I jump on that rogue art idea, I will be driven and motivated and get it done. Thankfully, though I have a hard time self motivating, I can work through the lack of drive and still make good art for other people, otherwise I never would have made it through college.
Now that I don't have a GPA steering my every move and I have to be my own motivation, I'm trying to make this flaw into a feature. When I get a crazy art idea, I do it. Of course now instead of no drive, I have a webcomic storyboarded but stalled in the character design, eight posts written for an environmental blog idea, a sample sketch and a half for a great history blog's Indiegogo, and two finished art pieces. Creativity overload!
I thought I would share some WIP shots I took of the piece that took me out of my slump and cat-apulted me back into drive (I couldn't resist):
Materials: toned card stock, mechanical pencil, Faber-Castile pens, watercolor, white gel pen, white conte pencil, black and white Prismacolors.
Stock art: a vintage postcard
The jewelry is based on Victorian/Edwardian Egyptian Revival jewelry, so not ancient but it is period for Art Nouveau.
