Well, I thought that I’d talk about repetition and artistic inspiration today. This was something I ended up thinking about in late April when I was preparing some of next October’s semi-digital paintings. For a little under two weeks before preparing this article, I’ve mostly been making daily paintings with similar character designs in them.
This was initially more of a “for the sake of my sanity” thing – due to various stresses at the time, I told myself that it was ok to be repetitive and just to paint whatever made me happy. But, on the morning before writing this article, I ended up making a quick and basic memory painting of a hazy landscape I’d seen during a car journey. That was supposed to be my original art for the day.
But, later, I suddenly had the instinct to make art. Any art. Normally, I’d just paint something in my art journal but there were only two or three pages left in the sketchbook and I didn’t feel like going through the rigmarole of starting a new art journal sketchbook. So, I initially decided not to paint anything… and then I realised how stupid it was to hold back artistic inspiration. So, I picked up my original art sketchbook and….
(Click for larger image) This is a full size preview. This digitally-edited painting should “officially” be posted here next October.
Yes, I had to do a bit more digital editing than I expected after I scanned the painting, but the initial inspiration was this unsettling “Habromania” horror game trailer (Warning – Flickering lights, cartoon blood, disturbing moments). Horror versions of “Alice In Wonderland” are always fascinating, but my painting ended up being less whimsical and more inspired by things like the Cradle Of Filth song “Beneath The Howling Stars” (Warning – flashing lights, edgy lyrics), “American McGee’s Alice” (2000) and Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” (1977).
Anyway, the point of this article is that some level of repetition – whether using the same type of setting, the same style of characters etc…. – can actually be extremely useful for feeling inspired. Not only does it give you an instant “starting point” for whatever you are going to paint or draw but, because you already know what part of your artwork is going to involve, this frees up more mental “processing power” for the rest of your drawing or painting.
Seriously, the random landscape I mentioned earlier aside, sticking to the same type of character design has – in most of the paintings at least – resulted in me having more energy for things like detailed backgrounds, interesting perspectives, occasional dynamic poses and stuff like that.
Yes, this – by definition – makes your art “repetitive” and, if you start getting bored, then draw or paint something else, but it’s amazing how – ironically – repetition can actually make you feel a bit more inspired.
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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂
