Well, I thought that I’d talk about how making art for an audience can change the art that you make, even when you are literally re-creating the same painting, or making two paintings based on the same thing. This was something I ended up thinking about in mid-June after I had an amazing daydream.
One about a parallel version of me who was a nerdy woman who studies at a university in some unspecified part of the past. It was almost more of a mood. One of piles of books and snow and tea. And, even though it wasn’t my usual dark, baggy and androgynous clothes, I knew exactly what outfit this other version of me wore – a vintage 1970s-style combo of a white turtleneck and a red/grey plaid wool midi skirt. There were also tiny hints of both Velma Dinkley from “Scooby Doo” and the mood/atmosphere of the Youtube channel “Willow Talks Books” to the daydream as well. And, like virtually all of these random “parallel versions of me” daydreams, this one was surprisingly joyous. It was also peaceful and relaxing too.
And, of course, I rushed to my art journal to make a quick semi-digital painting to document this. And, for something slightly rushed, it turned out better than I expected. Whilst the original daydream was set in a cavernous old house with a large glass back door – with flaking white paint between the glass panels – leading onto a snow-covered garden, I ended up relying on my almost two-decade old memories of seeing a covered walkway beside the library of Aberystwyth University in Wales for the location in the painting. Though, if memory serves, the pillars on one side of the walkway are grey concrete in real life, rather than pale brown (but pale brown contrasts with the blue sky better…).
The next day, I was slightly tired, but I had to prepare some original art which I’ll hopefully post online late next year, and – with no better ideas – I ended up making another semi-digital painting of this daydream and, whilst it focused on exactly the same person and location, the difference between the two paintings caught me by surprise.
(Click for larger image) Yes, the differences in mood and style are subtle but still noticeable. The version on the right will hopefully be “officially” posted here in late November next year.
The “art journal” version has a simpler perspective but the mood is a lot warmer and happier, which is more accurate to the daydream. The background also had almost subliminal hints of my feelings of nostalgia about playing old computer during the mid-late 2010s. If anyone is curious, the snow-covered hedge was a nod to the garden maze in “Blood” (1997) and the style of the building on the right-hand side of the painting was a nod to one level in “X-Com Enforcer” (2001). The “art journal” version was more cosy and “1990s” in terms of atmosphere. It was a “feel-good” sort of painting. Even the way that this other version of me is holding the books is different – she’s sort of “cuddling” them slightly, rather than just carrying them.
But the instant I started to think about the fact that the other painting would be shown to an audience, literally everything changed. I felt like I had to make the painting more “dramatic” and, well, my favourite way to do this is often to add influences from the horror genre. In particular, probably because of the white turtleneck, the original “Silent Hill 2” (2001) was probably the largest influence here. Not just the very slightly “colder” palette and the staticky fog that I added to the background, but also the fact that I went for a more dramatic-looking “camera angle” as well.
I wanted to make the lighting more dramatic as well, using a tiny hint of backlighting (using a digital fog effect improvised from a low-opacity version of the “smoke” brush in this open-source image editing program) and adding dramatic shadows to the foreground, in a way inspired by vague memories of watching old 1990s horror movies late at night on a tiny CRT television during the 2000s. And, following on from all of this dramatic-looking horror genre stuff, I also added a mildly nervous expression to the parallel version of me in this version of the painting.
There were also subtle differences in the materials too. The paper in my art journal is slightly cooler-toned, and the one in my original art sketchbook is slightly too warm-toned. What this meant for the latter was that I had to digitally lower the “colour temperature” of the scanned painting whilst editing it, and I probably over-compensated slightly (which is why, for example, the art journal version – ironically – has a very slightly warmer skin tone, despite using the same peach watercolour pencil for the skin tones in both painting).
Anyway, the point of this article is that – the instant you make art for an audience – it will change your art. In my original art journal painting, I was just trying to document a cool daydream, to get the mood of it down on the page. On the other hand, as soon as I started thinking about an audience, I felt like I had to make the painting more “dramatic”. I started taking more influence from the horror genre as well, because this looks cool. They are both paintings of exactly the same daydream. But the instant that the idea of an audience appeared in my mind, I had to focus more on “What would look impressive?” than I did when I was just making art for myself.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
