When I was in art school, I thought artistic progress went something like this.
You start somewhere and steadily get better and better.
It certainly seemed like the case when I first picked up a pencil. I had boundless ideas, but could never seem to capture them on paper.
The picture on the left is from my kindergarten portfolio. The writing says “I will go to the Art Insatoot [Institute] to see Escher”, in reference to one of my favorite artists, MC Escher.
I had dyspraxia, so it was a struggle to draw or write or do just about anything with my hands.
If there was something I really loved, I tried to be extra careful, and maybe you could see what I was trying to make. With this Noh mask, for instance, you can see my attempts at capturing things like facial features and dimples, even if I’m still struggling to figure out how they fit together.
I quit art for a while because I was so frustrated with what I could make.
In the meantime, I went through hand therapy. When I was a senior in high school, I was surprised at how much easier it was to draw. By the time I reached art school, I also learned how to paint.
I became friends with a person in Sweden who shared reference photos of her daughter for artists. I was proud of this piece at the time, and she was quite happy with it as well.
But when I tried to sketch imaginary scenes where I had no reference, I felt like I was starting all over again.
Here’s a sketch from an art school project where I tried to adapt The Velveteen Rabbit. It’s a little embarrassing to look at it now— I only had a reference photo of the horse from the front and I was trying to imagine what it would look like from the back, so the perspective and anatomy on the horse is a little off, and the angle of the bed isn’t on the same plane as the rabbit. I knew that I had to use reference, but hadn’t figured out the most effective ways of doing so. I’m glad to have made “ugly” pieces like this, because I otherwise wouldn’t have learned what I needed.
In a sense, I think artistic development involves getting set back to square one. You feel incompetent, like your work is going back to scribbles, but that is part of the process that actually keeps you learning.
Recently, I got feedback from the professional character designer Stephen Silver.
I like the expressive quality that Stephen brings to his work and thought he might help me see my characters in a new way…and he did!
Take a look at this bear from my current project, Nellie and the Nautilus:
Pre-Stephen:
He’s not too bad, he doesn’t have a major role in the story, but he’s not all that charismatic or lively.
Here’s what Stephen suggested:
His suggestions add a little bit of asymmetry, since more symmetrical characters are less lively. Here is my bear after Stephen:
It turns out that Stephen has set up his own Silver Drawing Academy where he has drawing jams and a tremendous library of resources. I’m enjoying his ideas about drawing animals and character expressions. Some of his ideas took me directly back to my childhood, like imagining faces and characters from household objects. And that’s when it hit me that progress isn’t a straignt line at all.
Maybe this is my working model of what progress is like.
It’s not being set back to ground zero, although it may seem like it at the time. Maybe making progress is like a spiral, or a nautilus shell; you grow by moving forward and moving backward, changing all the time, hopefully forming something beautiful in the process.
As a little find, here’s a wonderful behind-the-scenes video of the making of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio.
Very interesting and insightful, Krister!