Creative Entry #4: Digital Water

Man I feel so stressed out for uni, and when I get too stressed about what I have to do - when projects are due, keeping up with research assignments, and finishing two paintings within the next week - my brain tends to shut off, and trying to get anything academic done, such as book reviews and essays, would be an exercise in futility. So on days like this, when everything else is just BLOCKED, I resort to art.

Recently my good friend Richard Johnson, from DeviantArt http://richardj.deviantart.com/, finished an amazingly detailed sculpture of one of my made-up fantasy creatures, the dragon-lizards I call "Barocas". I was stunned to see his interpretation of my creatures (see below), and I was also especially flattered to see someone so interested in my strange monsters as to want to turn it into something three-dimensional. It made it seem so much more real!

Well this sculpture also reminded me that I had an unfinished pen drawing of a Baroca I drew in November 2009, when my laptop crapped out and had to go in for repairs for a month. During that time I drew and colored like mad, until my Intuos 4 tablet burned out and the picture sat on my hardrive, forgotten and unfinished ... until now, that is.

So last night, during my creative stint, I finished the picture. I actually began to color it the day before that as well, but the details in the background and ESPECIALLY the water took forever. (Original link here: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Watersports-152749364). I had to use Dianae's water tutorial (another artist on DeviantArt) for tips on how to digitally paint water, found here: http://dianae.deviantart.com/art/Simple-Water-Splash-Tutorial-89945904.

This reminded me of something Ken Robinson mentioned in the book I'm reading, 'The Element', in which he mentions finding your "tribe" will help you to excel further in your Element (the thing you love to do, and that comes easily to you). I long considered DeviantArt to be "my place" as far as little niches on the internet goes. These days most people like to use Myspace or Facebook, but I'm logging into DeviantArt daily instead, where I feel like I've found my tribe. In his book Robinson states that "often we need other people to help us recognize our real talents. Often we help people to discover theirs" (pg. 25); tutorials like Dianae's are an example of sharing ideas and styles to help improve yours and others' creative processes and techniques. I found her suggestions to paint water very useful for this picture, although it didn't make it any less arduous!


--Sak