Thoughts on art and trains

[shadesofmauve]

In not very long at all I'm off to emony42's house for the weekend (on the train, yay!) to help plan her garden -- which is quite ridiculous and presumptuous given the sorry state of my yarden, but she seems to like the idea.

I love trains for many reasons, but one of them is that I don't usually get car/motion sick on the train if I try to read, write, or draw, and I do on buses and in cars. Since my imagination usually takes flight when I'm rolling along in any kind of vehicle, being able to do something with that is awesome. Of course now I have such a huge list of Things To Do On The Train that I'd need more than an hour and a half train ride. :P

One of the Things To Do is think about composition with regards to my forever-unfinished fan-art work (a twitter conversation with regeener reminded me of this. Hi, Geener!). I make my bread-and-butter doing graphic design; in theory I can manage composition. In practice I do just fine if I start the 'right' way (thumbnails! Always thumbnails!) and quite poorly if, like with this piece, I really only set out to do a figure sketch/study, and it kind of grows into a picture. It's just not set up 'right' from the get-go -- it's an awkward middle-distance PoV, too close to be a scenery shot and two far to be a close-up, with the figures a bit too straight-on to the viewer. Oh well - even if I don't figure out a way to frame it/background tweak it into 'art', it'll still have served the purpose of teaching me to paint digitally, but it'd be nice after all this time spent if I could bump it up to the next level.

I also want to try the 25-expressions meme, which is an excellent one for anyone who draws, and just have to decide which character to start with.

And of course I could get started on writing the next chapter of Star.

And then, if I can figure out the pose, there's always doing a character portrait of the as-yet-unnamed protagonist for That Sci-Fi Idea Without A Plot. I've been wanting to draw her for awhile.

EDIT: Ooh, I could sketch ideas for my mailbox, too.

Man, sometimes in the morning the world feels so full of creative possibilities I'm just boggled. Wish I was better at hanging onto that feeling throughout the day.

Comments

[stasia]

I get that 'full of possibilities' thing in the morning, too, but I lose it when I think, "Okay, I can do [fill in creative thing here] after I just get through the [dishes/folding laundry/cleaning this one spot]..."

I never get the feeling back, even if I sit down to Be Creative.

Also, the internet is deadly.

I love trains! Have fun.

Stasia