The above three pictures shows that there was a lot of time between each drawing session. Time being relative, this mainly means there was some time to step back and return with a different perspective. Often times it's quicker to draw one of these group compositions when the whole scheme is figured out. This is basically me winging it and drawing from different influences. Half are direct references from the animation and the musical mashed up together. The other half are just plays on how the body moves.

One thing I am learning through the movement of the artwork is where my eye moves. The far left drawing is top heavy and moves to the left. With the main character the largest, the eye "could" get drawn back to her but I found myself looking at the top.

The middle drawing has a lot of flowing movement up at the top but I added the characters on the bottom right to move it back down and ground it. But the left felt a little week. I also changed the polar bear dog to look back into the center picture instead of away but I am not sure about it.

The right drawing has the characters on the bottom left circling back down towards the main character. However, it becomes more obvious how much looser I am drawing the characters than I was at the beginning. The main character is almost the least "flowing" but it could work. I have avoided messing with it because she could end up looking like something else completely different instead of what I initially wanted. And I usually go back to what I initially thought anyway.

Training. Here is where certain influences seep into the work. As I was moving along, bits and pieces of self-defense training and random art lessons are coming back to me. I remember certain bits of advice here and there about balance, movement, and the right mind. When I started informal training, often times I was left to figure out my own balance and correct bad posture. The same went for art. There was a clear difference in execution when I was positioned differently. If I began with a foggy mind, I would wander and get lost resulting in some form of physical or mental defeat. Art wise, I would cycle over the same little area over and over and over. Often times I was repeating the same thing. I would get lost. When my head is too full with thoughts, I get scattered and start throwing things all over without thinking and make a huge mess. The biggest issue is making that focus happen on a whim when things need to get done. However, this is also debatable with how much easier things go when you are having fun.

The working position, the right mental place, and the right tools can be a tough balance. Sometimes it's just nice to break all the rules and have fun with it. I didn't think I would be using the methods and skills I picked up here and there. I wasn't ever someone who would follow any rules or methods. But I find myself drawing from them in order to finish the piece instead of just forgetting about it. The bit of skillsets I was introduced to assists me when I would otherwise give up on it. I didn't necessarily pay money or go to a school for a lot of these lessons. I didn't earn a belt or a degree. But my mind stayed open to each and every lesson I was taught even if I thought it was complete rubbish at the time.

I suppose a lot of it was mental for me. I was the smallest and usually the only girl learning most of these things in art and self-defense. I had to jump higher and hit harder than my height and weight would allow. Going into each new form, I had to clear my mind completely in order to pick something new up with the speed and fearlessness a young child would. If I thought about how I couldn't, I was too small, I couldn't be like anyone else, then I wouldn't have had the chance to get pushed to physical limits and challenges that were exhilarating to face. I tried a bit of martial arts here and there. But it was doing sumi ink drawings that helped me be at peace with the informal training. It could have just been my eye rolling at how people were competitive and wanted to overpower, make the other submit. I couldn’t connect my body and mind with martial arts until I understood the mentality. Dance was always a great training session. That’s not to say that I wasn’t quick with Martial Arts. For some reason, I get overwhelmed and didn’t realize from the moment I stepped in, I was being trained ahead of the beginners’ lessons. The only problem is when I get started, I don’t ever really have enough money to keep up with the lessons. So I train by myself when I can and listen to every bit of advice I get so I don’t create bad habits.

I only had one try sparring with boxing. Just one. But I remember it vividly. I had fallen completely in love with the sport, with the variations and adjustments as well as the mental chess game. There was something about drawing each figure's distribution of weight in correlation to how many times I had a sparring glove smacked on my head because I was positioned wrong. I corrected it. I remember the moment it stuck in my head and my sparring partner let his guard down, so I smacked him on the head. Then from that second on, it became less of practice and more like a game watching each other move. Relating that to the drawing was a mentality I didn't have at the beginning but I started to return to as the drawing progressed. The physical execution of it is more of my mental place than of how "strong" I am or how "weak". One really huge boulder in the way is comparisons and a self-appointed ruler of achievement/failure. This again, is a balance. There is a certain awareness of your surroundings as they are in separation with who you are. It's the strategy of the two colliding that is the chess game rather than the competition, the inadequacies, and the need to overpower it. That was what made it less of following someone else’s methods and it became my style and my approach. It’s always a really interesting journey and every person has a tale to tell. Even if to you, it doesn’t sound interesting, it is. It’s what brought you to sharing your gifts and skills with the world. It is your voice, your thoughts, and the physical depictions of your motions on some form of an artistic media. This is a bit of my story as I am moving along and I thank you for following along with it.

Sincerely,
Gen

One of the frustrating parts of sharing a work in progress may just be the blob stages. I mean, look at that picture. It's all white space with some sketchy pieces here and there of the start of what I would "like" it to be. It's the appearance of what looks like an amoeba but in my head hopefully makes sense. The even more frustrating part I have heard when people are watching a process is "how do you get from that stage to having a complete work of art?"

Well, I just wanted to share as much of the process with you as possible. I get frustrated because I see several different methods to get from one point to the next and mine doesn't match at all. I used to think mine was wrong or exceedingly difficult when it shouldn't be. I spent the first few years trying very hard to emulate the steps other artists took.

Here's a fresh perspective to encourage you to keep going after the amoeba stages. When you do art, you are reaching a whole other part of your brain. When you paint, you can feel your heartbeat in the strokes. When I am doing micro sculptures, sometimes I relax to a point of where my heart slows to a steady relaxed pace of meditation. If you observe this, your hand shakes slightly with each heartbeat. So the theory is that when you are painting and you feel peaceful, it's because you found a groove to relax your heart rate to keep the strokes smooth. When I am working with a tiny needle tool and doing really intricate details, I do the same. This section of your brain is reached in different ways.

I would like to address my ADHD and Asperger’s to illustrate the theory better. The section of my brain that communicates these ideas from mind to hand to whatever media I am working with is no better and no worse than yours. It's different. For many years growing up, I couldn't find a good way to reach it and often times felt like I was failing with all the methods I was being taught. Often times, I would fail in art classes because I wasn't seeing the way the instructor was seeing. Those classes were specified instructions of following a certain step or method that I couldn't register due to the way my mind worked. Rather than viewing it as a disability, it is better described as my brain speaks in another language. From age 20 to 30, the speed of translation is quicker to a point of where you don't notice any discrepancies. However, if you caught me at 18, it felt like a brick wall as if there was "something wrong" with me. It couldn't be further from the case.

That being said, I sculpt as my style of reaching two dimension. I don't think immediately in 2D. I could never understand it. When I get tired and I see a realistic picture of an apple, I will touch it and have a few seconds of confusion due to my depth perception issues. If you hang around me long enough, you'll see me sort of fake it and tap a little bit to shake it off like I am drumming on the picture instead of trying to reach out to it. I'll drop pens right out of my hand for no reason except I lose the depth of the pen and forget. I will miss my glass when I am drinking on occasion. So when I am out eating a meal, you'll see me look in a triangular "shifty eyed" process before picking anything up because I am relating the geometry of surrounding objects to measure the distance instead of rely on my lack of depth perception alone. Often times, this expression gets me into trouble for appearing "shady" when really I am just trying to get a good footing of my surroundings so I don't trip up or cause a huge mess. This is why traditional methods of two dimensional art always escaped me and why sculpture opened that locked door.

Every piece of a work in process I do looks incredibly sloppy at first. But each scribble and blotch looks like a perfectly placed marker to me. It's the first stages of the clay form before it gets refined. And it's the most enjoyable process I have found when I am drawing. The part that is interesting when instructing people to draw is being able to communicate to the students how to process their thoughts into the paper. Some people are more apt to methods and steps. Some people think in geometrical shapes and see everything in simplified forms first. Some people see in layers on layers. It's all how you view it. And as you go along, you end up finding a style. You find your personal signature. It becomes your visual voice of artwork. The technicalities are small in comparison to the absolute beauty in the communication and expression of art. Often times I find being technical is the refining and the precise process. Without the emotion and without your personal imprint, it is merely just a technical picture without the humanity. It's the one thing that separates art from a scanned robotic copy of an already existing piece.

So, I hope this blog helps you start or continue sharing your artwork even if it looks weird to you or you are worried that it won't make sense to anyone else. I will continue to keep sharing my works in process in hopes that both you and I learn something new each time.

Sincerely,
Gen