A Brighter Color Palette Appears

In the interest of catching up to some new little paintings I'm working on, I'm going to combine the ink and flat color stages of Tension and Reverie into a single blog post. And as always, I'll chat about some things I'm thinking and moving through in my personal life - including ones related to this particular piece of fantasy art.

I originally began inking Tension and Reverie directly on the pencil drawing, which was done on a sheet of Bristol. (If you missed the pencil artwork, you can see it here.) But I was making a total mess of the faces. Even the slightest misstep with a pen or brush changes how an eye or mouth looks, and this drawing has more delicate details than the darker, more aggressive art I've done in the past.

So about halfway through the inking process I abandoned ship and started over fresh in Photoshop. (In hindsight, I didn't totally love the faces on the pencil drawing, so even if I'd done a great job inking them, I probably would've been unhappy with the end result.)

That turned out to be a very satisfying decision, giving me room to edit and re-draw specific areas as much as needed, doing AB comparisons of different attempts at a face, bird, etc.

The differences are subtle, but here's a side-by-side of the pencil and ink versions of this dude's face.

I did my best to replicate the texture and line width of the ink work I do on paper, and I'm reasonably satisfied with the results of that. (I actually forgot I had inked this digitally until I started writing this post. That's very different from how I feel about the line art for Moments After the End, which to me very much looks like a digital drawing.)

Detail from Moments After the End.

When it came to color, I went into Tension and Reverie expecting to use naturalistic colors. For example, I had specifically intended for two of the cardinals to be male and the other two to be female - and color them accordingly.

That obviously didn't happen.

It's amazing to me how each art piece dictates its own colors. It doesn't matter what I want or expect for the colors going in, once I'm working on it, I'm forced to adapt and give the art what it wants. The drawing for this one is a bit more flowery (literally) and high-fantasy-themed than my other stuff. It was also made with romantic feelings for someone who has a very bright, playful personality.

As a result, working in a darker palette or even a grounded, naturalistic tone just wasn't working.

Female and male cardinals.

In fact, now that the final colors for Tension and Reverie are done, it's kind of startling to compare with my other creations, which lean more toward horror art - it just feels lighter and more vibrant in tone. One thing I'm still on the fence about is the border, which is a major contributor to the brighter feel. I actually went back and forth on making it dark or light, as it has such a big impact on the overall feel of the art.

Here's a comparison of the two:

Update: after writing this post, I went back and re-worked the finished art using the darker border to see how it looks, and I think that was a good change. So the finished art I have posted in the Gallery is using the darker border.)

As always with these images that have a lot of objects/figures in them, it was a challenge to create strong visual separation between elements without the color turning into confetti. The (hopefully effective) solution I've found for that is to lean on two or three main colors and then bring in variations of them throughout the piece, ie a lighter or darker version or a slightly different hue.

Establishing the palette turned out to be the most time-consuming part of the color work, as the actual rendering of each element happened quite quickly. Part of that was because I was in a very intense moment in life where I was highly motivated (more on that in a moment), but I also think it's because I've learned to dial in the flat colors as much as possible before beginning the next steps - it saves me a ton of backtracking.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. I'll talk more on the color rendering process when I post details about the finished art.

In the meantime, I have some new thoughts on free will I want to think through here (I talked about it a lot in this post from 2023.) This has been a prominent theme in my life recently, and it's closely related to the inspiration for my artwork, particularly on pieces that involve identity such as Traversing Illusory Sequences and Epistemic Machinations.

For reference, my thoughts around this topic initially emerged from a combination of daily meditation, Sam Harris' book Free Will (and the synopsis of it on his Waking Up app), a brief exploration of Taoism, and my ongoing scrutiny of the causes behind my successes and failures in personal development.

I was in a pretty rough spot late last year and into January of this year. Things were complicated at work, I was unhappy with where I was living, and the situation with the person who inspired Tension and Reverie had become...challenging.

I felt profoundly agitated and restless, and all the meditation and mindfulness in the world couldn't get me to calm my shit down. I had to improve my circumstances, and I had to do it now.

So I worked my ass off for over three months. No video games, no distractions - just four to six hours of sleep each night and a massive effort directed at changing my circumstances. The result of that effort was a new job with better hours and better income, a nicer apartment, and an opportunity to commit considerable time and energy to other areas of my life (including my art!)

That's wonderful, and I've certainly tried to appreciate the many positive changes that have come into my life. But there's a part of it that feels very disconcerting, and that's the fact I don't feel I had control over any of it.

Despite all the intention and focus and effort that happened in those months, I felt like I was on auto-pilot. I was completely unable to find inner peace, and similarly, I had no brakes on my forward momentum.

It's like I was possessed - like I had no choice in the matter.

And once the desired changes in my life were complete, that intense, constructive energy I'd been leaning on evaporated. It just melted away and turned back into its usual background hum.

I knew I had to leave my job. I knew I had to leave my apartment. I knew I wanted to do door-to-door sales. Did I really have a choice in any of it?

I'm re-reading Free Will at the moment and Sam Harris has a very simple example that speaks to the part of this I find most compelling, which is that I am not free to want the things I want, which of course ultimately influence what I choose. This is true even when I feel fully confident I chose the best option, or when no choice was even apparent.

Where is the freedom in being perfectly satisfied with your thoughts, intentions, and subsequent actions when they are the product of prior events that you had absolutely no hand in creating?

"For instance, I just drank a glass of water and feel absolutely at peace with the decision to do so. I was thirsty, and drinking water is fully congruent with my vision of who I want to be when in need of a drink. Had I reached for a beer this early in the day, I might have felt guilty; but drinking a glass of water at any hour is blameless, and I am quite satisfied with myself. Where is the freedom in this? It may be true that if I had wanted to do otherwise, I would have, but I am nevertheless compelled to do what I effectively want. And I cannot determine my wants, or decide which will be effective, in advance. My mental life is simply given to me by the cosmos. Why didn't I decide to drink a glass of juice? The thought never occurred to me. Am I free to do that which does not occur to me to do? Of course not.

And there is no way I can influence my desires - for what tools of influence would I use? Other desires?

I can't help but find myself at the same conclusion I reached two years ago, which is that regardless of how I ultimately respond to a situation, there are emotions, desires, and impulses influencing my decision that are completely outside of my control. Even the choice to psyche myself up or pull myself out of a gloomy state must be preceded by a desire to do so.

I simply cannot find the place where Preston is choosing a motivation before it occurs.

Suffice to say, I'm convinced at this point there are forces outside my control guiding me more than I guide myself. The bigger question to me is whether those forces are attributable to simple chance or if they're the result of some omniscient cosmic energy. Surprisingly, I find myself leaning toward the second explanation.

Which basically means I'll be painting images of Jesus soon.

Kidding.

Thanks as always for being here. If you enjoyed reading, subscribe for email notifications and consider sharing my art with a like-minded friend or family member. Cheers until next time.