Creative block

There has been a significant block in my creative life that I have (hopefully) banished within the last few weeks. I am still going through the debris that is left behind after you shatter a block and keeping my eyes open to make sure it doesn't re-establish itself if my attention wanes.

An old friend recently commented on my most recent artwork and I began to relay why it had been such an ordeal for me to create. As I was doing so I realised that I had kept this particularly ugly incident in my life under wraps all those years ago and those closest to me at the time had no idea what I had been going through. This was pretty much par for the course all those years ago, I had no idea that I could share my burdens and have the support of my friends and maybe they could have helped the skewed perspective that I left within.

I have always had a great love of fantasy, I recall reading the Greek myths when I was only 6 or 7 years old (in a children's format of course!) and imagining what it was like to ride a Pegasus to battle and defeat the Chimera. My love of drawing was something that I also developed, although I remember most of my school projects revolving around shoes and actual still life objects. When I got to my teens I do recall drawing dragons and knights along with the typical space ships and ninjas. Although I think that my life drawing was better and I preferred the attention those got rather than my imaginative drawings.

My experiences at high school and college were less than thrilling with regards to my art. With the exception of a few talented life drawing teachers my artistic aspirations were struggling through a barren wilderness. Most of the art teachers felt it was perfectly acceptable to leave the class room and often not re-appear till the end of the class. I was a child that needed constant direction and I often felt lost in those times and my artwork would suffer. College was worse and it could often number in the weeks before I could spot a teacher lazily drifting down the hall with a mug of tea in their hands and the projects often consisted of little more direction than "do whatever you want". This was great for the driven artists (of course there are always a few) who decided to create exhibits of rotting meat, curtains of used nappies (diapers) and images of women attached to milking machines. I yearned for the days of the simple project...just draw your shoe. But alas those simpler days had gone.

University dawned brightly for me and for the first few years I got back into my stride. Many of the projects I was given as an Illustration major were a challenge to me. We learned to master the different mediums and unusual techniques in watercolours, acrylics, chalk, charcoal, etching....you name it, we learned it. Then the second year dawned and we moved onto individual projects and "briefs".  I recall doing a project in which we combined parts of an animal together from various reference to make a "chimera" in the most technical sense. I loved the project and it must have awoken something in me because I realised that if I could draw anything I wanted then surely I could begin to draw fantasy pictures once more.

The next project I decided to paint a wizard casting a spell surrounded by a celtic knot-work border. It took me a while to master how to draw the intricacies of the knot-work, but eventually I finished my piece. When it came time to show our tutor our work I happily showed my work to her, hoping for some encouragement. Unfortunately she seemed to consider the piece and then said to me " You aren't good enough to do this kind of work, you never will be. It would be better if you tried to do something that uses what skills you have. Fantasy art is so competitive and you need superb references. Better to do something that will sell."

I guess I should have just disregarded what she said, but to me, a person who needed that firm direction it seemed like good advice. I could see how I might not be good enough. She was the tutor, what did I know about fantasy artwork? I didn't want to be poor did I? So I put away my ideas of pure fantasy and concentrated on what I was good at.

Unfortunately things didn't get any better. The three female teachers who ran the course had been in a review with one of the female students and had remarked that they believed men had it easy in life compared to women and that to rectify that they lowered the grades of all the male students. The female student decided that it was not really her place to do anything or say anything (other than to let some of the guys know). This meant there was no ground to lodge a complaint.

In the third year I decided that I would try my hand at computer artwork..maybe get a job in the games industry, another of my passions. So I spent my time learning the software by myself to produce some artwork. They didn't respond to well to that either. They said that computer art was cheating and there was no future in it and that I had better stop trying. At this point my stubbornness kicked in and I kept on with my projects. This was stopped when they said if I kept trying they would simply fail me regardless of how good my work was.

At this point exhaustion took over and I decided that I would at at least like to come away with a passing grade. As you can imagine, I stepped away from artwork as soon as I finished my schooling and didn't touch pencil to paper for almost 8 years. What caused me to pick it up is another story, but the block remained.

I realised this year that I could no longer abide having listened to their "advice" and would not be free until I had produced a piece of fantasy work in 3D. The picture below is the result of that thought. I used no reference and it came wholly from my imagination.