I’m not going to lie; there is a part of me that really wants my art to sell, but that is definitely not my sole purpose of creating. I make art in hopes that I can push my creative limits and because I just love it. It’s part of who I am, like I’m just wired for it. Even when I don’t create anything for months, I am still drawn to some kind of art or I surround myself with it.
So I’m posting this because this is an example of me pushing my creativity. My friend & local art dealer Alfie is currently curating a comic book themed art show and this is what I came up with.
At first, I wasn’t going to participate. I had no ideas whatsoever, it’s been years since I created anything in a comic book style. But then last minute (of course) – the idea started to take form; I had memes on my mind (because DUH, memes are so popular right now). I was also trying to just keep it simple.
This week I was reading an article about how Pablo Picasso generates ideas and talks about Matisse’s method, which is what happened to me with this comic illustration:
Matisse does a drawing, then he recopies it. He recopies it five times, ten times, each time with cleaner lines. He is persuaded that the last one, the most spare, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and yet, usually it’s the first. When it comes to drawing, nothing is better than the first sketch.
I don’t have a photo of the 2nd version, but because I didn’t like the lettering of “Dark Fantasies”, I redrew it again. 2nd version is much cleaner than this one, but I didn’t like the girl’s face as much. I was going to redraw it a third time to see if I can capture her face perfectly again, but I ran out of time.
This is what I mean when I say the first sketch is always the purest.
Artists are their own worst critics, aren’t they?