There is absolutely no worse feeling for an artist than the anxiety of staring at a blank canvas.
And please don't go around thinking this happens only to amateur artists. Even well-established professional artists struggle with the anxiety of starting a painting that might not be good enough for their clients. Today while I show you my process for my latest digital painting "Confronting Fears", we'll also be talking about fear in art, and how pro artists go about overcoming it. Let`s dive in! š
Experiencing anxiety
Facing your fear starts from a place of honesty. Let's do a true recollection of how painting can be for many professional artists out there:
Imagine you got recently contacted by a client. He said his whole company had heard about your work by now. They absolutely love all the awesome successful pieces you've made in the past!
So much so that they want one of their own! š
And better yet - They are willing to give you some BIG MONEY for it! In fact, they'd be honored! š¤
They are pumped!
YOU ARE PUMPED!
THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT!
You grab your coffee, grab your favorite pens, pencils, erasers, brushes, digital tablet, and all the best paper you can find. Nothing can stop you now. IT'S ON BABY!
...until you see this:
GOD. DAMN. IT.
Your brain immediately goes full throttle into imposter-syndrome mode:
- How do I even start this?
- Jesus, how could I trick them into thinking I am good at art? Pfff I'll never pull this one off.
- Ahhh... How do you draw a face again? I need to give those Andrew Loomis books a 2nd read.
- Go ahead! Paint something AWESOME! Aren't you an "ARTIST"? I thought this should be easy for you! Stop hitting yourself, Stop hitting yourself
š¤£ It's just a self-bullying shitshow. But recognizing that you're in the middle of it is a really important step in overcoming it. Breathe in, breathe out, and tell yourself:
- It's okay brain, you are scared because you're not sure what is going to happen from here on.
But trust me, I've done that before".
Painting "Confronting fears"
Step 1 - Get on it!
When I stared at my Photoshop blank canvas for this piece, I wanted to make a story-driven illustration.
It should be about fear, but I didn't have all the concepts nailed down. Normally it would be smart (and professional) to take my time and actually write a small bit of a story for what I was trying to convey in my painting. But tonight? Bro, my art block was blown to the roof! And just like a little kid with crayons: I just wanted to paint... š
So that was exactly what I did. I took some of Kyle Webster's free Adobe Brushes for Photoshop and just started to aimless blot different combinations of colors and shapes on the canvas until something suddenly clicked and gave me an idea! I ended up with this weird concept of green and browns mixed together with a bunch of square shapes that reminded by of some very sketchy places I've driven by in Oakland, CA.
Listen, if you ever took a wrong turn in Oakland, you may have ended up in a weird dark alley with some green mold on the walls, dirt, and A LOT of left-over glue from the bazillions of handbills, posters, notices, signs, advertisements, stickers, or really any other printed material posted every day on the urban walls. LMAO š¤£ (You gotta love CA tho! Place is amazing).
Step 2 - Evolve the ideas that excited you.
Once I knew this urban wall depiction was something that I would like to pursue, my feeling was that making the whole scene at night would help me portray the theme which was "Fear". Nobody likes to think of themselves alone in a dark alley, ESPECIALLY at night. So let me dark things up:
Step 3 - The story begins
Awright, we got our dark alley, but so what!? Nothing special about it just yet. As humans, we are drawn by connection (I mean, look at this very community we are part of. HIVE existence is itself proof of what I'm saying š). But because this is an ultimate truth for our species, there is nothing more powerful to drive this sense of connection than the human figure.
Seeing another human depicted in any artistic form calls out attention (for better or worse). We are the heroes of our own story, and we'd like to know how the stories of others compare to ours. Almost as much as we like to share our own stories with others. There is a true beauty in all that... BUT THE POINT IS: We need a character. So here he is!
Step 4 - Drawing the character x Making him part of this world
Drawing our scared boi is one thing. But right now, he and our urban wall background are entirely different entities. You can even see the outline of the character, completely separating him from the scenery. If we want to tell a story, we want to make believe this is like a still shot/screenshot of a feature film or a movie. Therefore, the character and the background have to co-exist in this scene.
The easiest way to achieve that effect is to ensure that the lighting of both the character and the surroundings follow the same pattern. So we need to define a light source.
But wait! It would be much more effective for our painting if we could somehow weave this light source into our storyline of "Dude in a dark alley at night, who is visibly scared by something off-camera!". Heck, something like a flickering lamppost would do the trick!
Adding the light source requires that we work the shadows across the piece as well. Our goal is to define the forms and give them the appropriate volume so that our audience can understand what is going on.
Brotip - Making sure that you have these may help:
- Dark parts of the character matching dark parts of the background (ex: cloak, bottom right),
- Bright parts of the character matching bright parts of the background,
(ex: rim light of the hair, head, shoulder upper left) - Dark parts of the character matching bright parts of the background (body, coat, silhouette)
- Bright parts of the character matching the dark parts of the background (rim light on hands against the dark of the coat and background, shoulder on the right side of the painting against the background).
Step 5 - Nice! Your character is there! But what is his story?
We are slowly getting there, grasshopper. When tackling the story, I needed to reinforce the idea that this guy is feeling cornered. Right now, there is just too much space for him to scurry off. So I added a trash bin on his left flank and a bunch of boxes and trash cans to his right. This way he is now TRAPPED and TRULY CORNERED. šŗ
Secondly, wanted to make it even more evident to the audience that this is NOT the usual part of the city where you`d take your kids to play. It should also be a place where some of the bad figures of the town gather to do their illegal stuff. Perhaps the outside of a gangster bar or something. So I added a sketchy poster advertising for "Sweet Girls" featuring a young lady with a garter belt - which should be enough of a clue this dark alley is not the best place for your everyday Christian family trip. šš¤£ I even made the light post red to emphasize this district is a RED LIGHT DISTRICT. š
So by now, we start asking ourselves "Okay, what is this dude doing there? Who is he? Why is he wearing a full coat instead of being dressed up? Is he looking for girls? He looks shy tho... Is he in trouble with the local pimps? What is going on!?" And these are all good signs! When you get your audience asking questions about the story, they are HOOKED! š£ š
But we can do more.
Step 6 - Give a hooked audience what they want
Once hooked, your audience will need a constant feed of visual interest that could give them cues as to what the heck is happening with your character. We also need to concern ourselves with composition problems that may arise as we progress with our painting. Right now the right side of the painting is pretty empty while the left side has the light source (pretty big deal) and another human figure (huge deal) being displayed. We need to balance things out by adding another big subject of visual interest to fill the empty space on the right. Again, this offers us an opportunity to convey even more details about our story! š
Here is what I did:
WHAAAT!? WAIT!! There's a SUSPECT ON THE LOOSE!? Who is that now? And why is the newspaper torn apart by some animal with big claws!? THE PLOT THICKENS...
- Is this dude the creature!? Is he about to FIGHT the creature!? Are any of the girls the creature!? Why are there so many bullet shots on that wall now? Right below where the creature would be while tearing down that newspaper notice! DAMN IT! What is happening!? I wanna read this thing! š
Once again, if this was a still shot of a movie, the visual elements of the image already give us nice cues of what the movie may bring to the table. It looks like the genre is SUSPENSE, it may have cops involved, some potential gruesome killings, maybe some love scenes, and definitely someone is facing a dark end.
Step 7 - Conclusion
In the end, you should foreshadow what is the adversary of our hero protagonist. Every blockbuster story always covers the journey of a hero against a challenging adversary (which does not necessarily mean "a villain"). In our case, we need to give this final - very important clue to our audience: What does the creature look like?
DAAAAMN!! š¹š¹š¹š¹š¹š„š„š„š„š„
- So this is definitely a man-eating monster! But is he about to eat the hero!? Is the hero hiding while the monster finishes up his meal!? Is the monster a girl!? His hand definitely has bit claws that could have torn the newspaper... Boy, I'd watch that!
Step 8 - Stylistic choices and final remarks
Although we could definitely stop on Step 7, you can always play with the colors and try to bring a little bit more realism to your illustration. Photoshop 2023 has some pretty interesting neural filters that can look at grayscale images like the one I painted here and suggest interesting color palettes for you to play on. I tried some of those and it looked pretty solid for a start, check it out:
So in the end, you see that TRUSTING THE PROCESS is the key to CONFRONT and OVERCOME your fears.
This painting is called "Confronting Fears" because I wanted to use it to inspire you to grab your confidence once again, gather your tools, and start painting! Share your voice with us. everything you need is inside you. Remember! Always tell your brain in a moment of panicking and paralyzing anxiety:
š- It's okay brain, you are scared because you're not sure what is going to happen from here on.
But trust me, I've done that before".š
I trust you to take the lead from your fears, and look forward to what you're gonna draw next!
Thanks for sharing your time with me. I hope this could bring you some nice pointers in art and also in your life. šā¤ļø
Stay safe, and keep on painting!
Best regards from you big brother,
Galiant