The House of the Scorpion: A Retrospective and Other Things (Part 2)

It is finished!

And.....it actually looks nothing like the horrific colors I was attempting to do at the end of the last post.

Which I am TOTALLY OKAY with.

For some reason, it looks way better on this screen than in Photoshop. 

I am quite pleased with the final result. Not ecstatic, being the nit-picky artist that I am. But still pleased. Maybe someday I'll go back and refine it a bit, but right now, I like it. 

The important thing, though, is that I learned a LOT from this project. And, oddly enough, also the Intro to Computer Art class I'm taking. In conjuction. At the same time. 

See, I've never been the best with digital art. So, when I started this project, I'm not quite sure why I thought it would be a great idea to do the whole thing digitally. I think, initially, the idea was that I would scan in the lineart, clean it up, get an idea for color, and then print it back out and use watercolors to finish it. Somehow, though, once it went up in Photoshop, it just stayed there. And it never occurred to me to take it anywhere else. 

And from it, I learned some lessons. Lessons that, as a 21-year-old art student, I really should have learned a long time ago, but hey, we all learn at our own pace. 

And the one I'm going to talk about in this post is an obvious one: NEVER GIVE IN. 

Well, I mean, do give in, when it's time. Sometimes, you're in a situation that's not worth even trying to salvage. But this was not one of them. Many, many, many times, I really wanted to just delete the stupid picture and just start over again. But the thing was, the reason I wanted to quit was stupid. I wanted to quit because, honestly, I'm not good at digital painting. It terrifies me to try it. I hate being bad at things, especially in an art class, where I'm usually seen as being "talented" (at least, when I was little kid. But those things stay with you.). The thing is - and this is the best-kept secret of non-prodigy artists everywhere - ART IS NOT A TALENT. Not exactly. Not the kind I'm talking about. Yes, there are prodigies. But they are rare. For the rest of us, how do you develop an understanding of perspective? Figure out proportions? Composition? Which colors go with which? What techniques create the best texture? Heck, how do you even come up with a cool idea for a picture? 

Let me tell you, in three words: 

PRACTICE, EXPERIMENTATION, CRITICISM 

There are more words that would also fit in (LETTING PEOPLE TELL YOU WHAT A CRAP ARTIST YOU ARE AND WORKING HARDER, etc.), but those are the three big basic ones that come to mind. 

Now, disclaimer time: when I say "talent", I am not talking about people who have a knack for figuring things like proportion. Those people do exist, and they aren't necessarily prodigies. What I am specifically referring to here is the idea that all artists have - or need - is talent. Like, when you show a picture that you have worked really hard on to someone - you have slaved over it for hours - and they say, "Wow, that looks awesome! You're so talented." While the compliment is appreciated, it kind of makes it sound like you didn't have to work very hard. Like, you just sat there with your beret perched atop your head, and this brilliant idea suddenly came to you, and you just put pencil to paper and ten magical minutes later, with little effort, you had this masterpiece. 

And again, I'm not dismissing the sincerity behind such a compliment. I'm just saying that, while I appreciate the compliment, I also want you to know that a LOT of work went into it. Not just several hours - years of work, refining and agonizing over technique and composition and style and......etc., etc., etc. 

In short....it takes a long time to get to that point. 

How does this tie in to this assignment? Well, just that I am remembering that it took me a long time even to get to the point where I was even comfortable enrolling in an art class. It took a long time to work up the courage to show my portfolio to people. It took a long time to develop my style to the point where I felt like it looked presentable. And I'm still learning. I have a LONG way to go, and so many other things to learn. Digital painting is just another technique to learn, along with everything that comes with it. 

Alongside my Illustration class, I've been taking an Intro to Computer Art class. When I signed up for it, I thought that I was going to be learning digital painting techniques. Instead, we're learning about all the different mechanics and tools of Photoshop and Illustrator, which is really tedious and boring and I really wish I could drop this class because of it. But the thing is, in a weird way, I'm also really glad that I signed up, because while it's boring, I am learning. Before, I only knew a few tools in Photoshop, and had no idea about how to download new brushes, how to use masks, how to crop properly, how to use grids....on and on. And don't even get me started on Illustrator. I barely even knew it existed. And now I use it all the time. 

So, what all this rambling comes down to is this: learning new things kind of sucks sometimes. We have to go through an awkward phase where we know what we want to do, but have no real idea of how to get there with the tools we have. We have to mess up and make mistakes in order to figure out what works and what doesn't. And while it's frustrating, it works. I know I have a long way to do go with digital media - heck, any media - but now that I've done this project, I feel like I'm a little closer to becoming the kind of artist I want to be. And that's what counts.