Striving for More Visual Complexity in My Art

In the span of a week, I finished the color art on one piece, the ink work on another (the one I discussed in my last post), and now the pencil art on a third one, which I'm sharing here. I'm calling this one Ascension.

I was also doing more blog writing than I have in years. There are several factors that went into this burst of enthusiasm and productivity, but without question the biggest reason for it came from deleting my instagram.

By nature I'm a very private person who thrives on solitary experiments, and as a result social media has always felt draining to me. But I've learned so much in the past couple years about how deleterious the platforms really are to our mental health and productivity, and in conjunction with some recent efforts (and successes!) to really reconnect with the excitement and enthusiasm I had for life and art-making as a kid, it's become crystal clear to me that all my socials had to go.

And deleting instagram has been one of the best things I've ever done for my art.

So, there I was killing it on my art and blogs for a bit, and then I got sidetracked hard for several days once my Retroid Pocket 3+ (a handheld gaming device built for emulation of old games) showed up in the mail. Talk about distractions...

I talked about this a bit recently, but video game emulation has surprisingly been a huge key in helping me reconnect with my childhood, and by extension my true passion and motivation for making art. In short, it's been liberating to allow myself to play and experiment without a deeper purpose for what I'm doing. That, in turn, then led to me deleting instagram, clarifying my goals here for the blog, and now doing much more writing and arting than I have in years.

So I've gained a ton of clarity and enthusiasm recently about what I'm doing with my art, largely as a result of letting myself tinker with retro handhelds, so I figure I can I allow myself play with those devices and not beat myself up about it too much.

But we're not here to talk about video games, let's look at this new image.

At some point in the past year, I started using mechanical pencils as part of my drawing process. Some of the earlier pieces like Unleashing the Cataclysm and Gaia were drawn entirely with a wooden 2H drawing pencil, but I found the mechanical pencils give me more accuracy and precision once I get to the shading and detail work, so I started really leaning into that.

For the past few drawings I only used a mechanical pencil with a .05 lead, but on this one I went smaller with a .03 for the vast majority of the hatching and detail work, and also larger with a 0.9 for the fatty outlines on the larger figures. I'm really happy with the greater diversity of line width and the new level of detail, and I feel there's a ton of room for me to grow into that going forward.

I've also been re-reading Murder Falcon and have been really inspired by Daniel Warren Johnson's line art. He has a super loose, energetic style and his drawings are packed with motion lines. I feel my art tends to be pretty stiff and I've never played with motion lines on figures, so I decided late in the pencil process to start re-working the outlines of the figures on this one. The goal was to help them look like they are moving but also kind of disintegrating from the light emitting from the little alien baby.

Also, I'll save the details about this for the finished color version, but this is the first drawing I've worked on (recently, but maybe ever?) where I was really aware of the personal inspiration for the imagery as it was coming out of me. This drawing was still created spontaneously, as always, but instead of needing to sit down with a friend afterward and try to chat through what the imagery means to me, I could identify the motivation for it as it was appearing on the page.

That was super gratifying, and I think it helped me pack in even more symbolism than usual. So I'm really excited to keep working on Ascension and and sharing more info on the inspiration for it at a later date. (Update: you can see and read about the final art here.)

But holy hell, did this take me a long time. I have never been a speedy drawer, but I freaking labored over this one. This is by far the most complex image I've done since I got rolling on my art seriously again in the summer of 2021 (and by extension, ever.)

I mentioned this last month in my post for the finished color art on Invocation of the Seraph, but it's really amazing and cool to me how pencil/pen and ink illustrators' drawings tend to get simultaneously smaller and more detailed as the artists get better. I'm not at any kind of exceptional skill level right now, but there's no doubt my art has evolved just since I did Symbiotic (which was 14" x 17"), and I'm now able to jam more imagery into each square inch of my art.

I actually feel the imagery is a little too packed in here, like there is room to open up to a larger drawing, and I'd love to start going bigger while also continuing to dial in the smaller details. And without the pressure to feed instagram's algorithm with frequent posts, there's nothing to stop me from going that route. Who knows, maybe at some point I'll be working on images that take me an entire year to create.

Along those lines: for years now I've lamented how the insta algorithm is affecting artists. I was following several extremely talented artists on the platform who posted generic sketches every day and rarely ever created or shared anything they'd put serious time and effort into. Great for insta, great for new followers, but is it great for the artist? For their fans? Will anyone five years from now be excited to wade through hundreds of rushed sketches made to game insta's algorithm?

I'm not even interested in that stuff now. I'd much rather look at images that people really committed themselves to, that involved some level of problem-solving and struggle.

I couldn't help but wonder what those artists might create if they were free of that pressure to post so often. Would they create larger, more refined and detailed work where they really pushed themselves creatively?

Maybe, maybe not. But I've now answered that question for myself, and the answer is hell fucking yeah I'm going to.

Maybe at some point in the future I'll return to Instagram and ramp up what I'm doing with socials, but for now, doing longer posts here on the blog just makes more sense for me personally. Because, as you've learned if you're still reading this, I am a dude full of words.

In any case, I appreciate you reading. As always, consider subscribing for email notifications and share this with a like-minded friend or family member. Cheers until next time.