Well, I thought that I’d talk about making art from imagination. Because, whilst this is more difficult and often results in worse-looking art, there is actually one overlooked cool thing about it – you have to both imagine and create everything in the painting. And I want to talk about how this makes you a better person.
After all, in order to be able to draw or paint from imagination, you have to actually spend time learning. You have to observe the world and/or research everything from architecture to fashion to weather. You also have to know how to draw a wide variety of people as well. Often, artists who create from imagination talk about building up a “mental library”. Not only that, you also have to have a better knowledge of artistic “rules” – compared to painting from life or from reference – to even make art that looks half as good as those things.
This often also means learning stuff that might be outside what you would normally learn, and this opens your mind slightly. Whilst all artists who make art from imagination often have weak areas – such as bicycles and animals in my case – making art from imagination gives you a surprising level of visual knowledge outside of what you would normally learn.
You also learn a ton of stuff about yourself when you make art from your imagination too. For example, before I wrote this article, I was feeling slightly tired and mildly uninspired. So, I decided to paint whatever felt both the easiest and most meaningful, not caring too much about variety or about the audience. And I ended up making this wintery mid-1990s style semi-digital painting from imagination. Here’s a full-size preview:
This digitally-edited painting will hopefully be “officially” posted here in mid-November next year.
Is this painting anything like my actual real life? Unfortunately not. But the mood of it, a stylised early-mid 1990s version of the US, dramatic wintery weather, slightly vintage fashions etc… well, it felt more meaningful and emotionally-satisfying to paint than anything else did in that moment.
Why is it emotionally satisfying? Well, when you make art from imagination, you are technically everything in that piece of art. Everything that you put down on the sketchbook page is something that existed in your imagination first. It’s like a daydream, but with more focus behind it. Because you have to make a ton of tiny creative decisions to translate it into art.
At its very best, this results in a feeling I can only describe as “God-like”, a euphoric pantheistic feeling of being everything. Once, it resulted in having a daydream so vivid and realistic that I was all but there. Even when it is just “really good”, you get to vicariously be everything in your art – you feel the emotions and personalities of your characters, you feel the atmosphere of the location etc…
Alas, with this one, I unfortunately didn’t quite get that but I did at least get a vague sense of watching an imaginary 1990s movie or music video, of the optimistic innocence of that time etc… The overall mood of this. I got to experience a mood whilst I was drawing and painting. And it was awesome 🙂
Anyway, having made lots of art from imagination over the years, the layout of my imagination isn’t a total mystery to me – but I learnt a lot about it by making art from imagination (and daydreaming a lot). Whilst it is important to build up general knowledge, just telling yourself “Draw or paint whatever feels the most fun or the most meaningful right now” will often show you something about yourself, or your imagination. In this case, it’s that my imagination is usually more feminine than masculine, that I like rose-tinted historical settings and precipitation is my favourite type of weather.
Not only that, in order to improve your imagination, not only do you have to do lots of daydreaming but you also have to give it lots of influences as well. You have to read novels, watch movies, play videogames etc… and spending time with creative works is always time well-spent. Not only that, making art from imagination doesn’t mean that you can’t have influences, just that you can’t look at them whilst drawing or painting. What this means is that you tend to focus on what is the most memorable.
For example, some of the influences on the semi-digital painting I showed you earlier were probably: The very first three “Silent Hill” videogames, a 1990s TV show called “Lois & Clark”, that episode of “Star Trek: Voyager” about one of Captain Janeway’s late-1990s ancestors, this Laura Lippman novel, and maybe Alanis Morisette’s music video for her song “Ironic”. It’s a slightly random mixture of influences, but this is where originality comes from.
And the thing is that what is “memorable” for you might be different to what another artist finds “memorable”. For this piece of art, it was mostly fashions, weather and atmosphere/settings. But, for another artist, it might be the technology, or the lighting design or something like that. In other words, making art from imagination teaches you a lot about your own sensibilities – which not only lets you make art that is more “you” but also helps you to find pieces of media that you’ll enjoy as well. This enjoyable media will then probably, in turn, influence your art. It’s a virtuous cycle.
So, yes, making art from imagination will make you a better person – even if, again, you have to put in twice as much effort for art that only looks half as good – because all of the extra learning and research you have to do makes you slightly more open-minded. It’ll also teach you so much about yourself, your imagination and your sensibilities as well. It’s also just sort of neat to be able to make a painting or drawing without even having to glance at the internet as well.
————————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
