It’s about time for me to start creating digital art after a long lay off. How long? It seems like it’s been a year, at least. The last piece of art I created was this piece looking down on the main avenue in Vientiane toward the president’s mansion.
I stated in a previous post that I wanted to get back on the creative wagon, so I’d better start.
I have a few ideas about my next piece of art. The one that most attracts me at the moment is one based on the song “Midnight at the Oasis” by Maria Muldaur that she recorded way back in 1973.
So, the next digital art I post on this blog will probably be from that idea. When will I post it? Who knows, but not too far in the future, hopefully. Perhaps I should make a video about the creative process for making it.
My mentor and guru, Sebastian Michaels of My Photo Artistic Life and Quill and Camera posts in the latest Living the Photo Artistic Life magazine, issue 135,
“The secret isn’t in the material. The secret isn’t even in what you do with the material in Photoshop.
The secret is in loving the process of creating art each day.
The secret is in falling in love with the artistic life itself.
As a creative photographer, it can’t just be about the one shot in a hundred that turns out worthy of your portfolio. It has to be about the feel of the camera in your hands, the controls under your fingers and the compositions you’re framing through the eyepiece. It has to be about that strange, almost dreamlike state you slip into as you seek to create something beautiful, original, stunning…
And as a digital artist working in Photoshop, you have to fall in love with playing with brushes, assigning blend modes, painting on layer masks. You have to fall in love with laying down dramatic lighting and shadows, with finessing textures and making subtle
tweaks to the toning.
You have to fall in love with creating the perfect background, extracting models, and bringing together creative elements and artistic content.
You have to take joy in playing with the Warp tool, adjusting Camera Raw settings, stacking Filters.
To you, all these have to become as delightful as the feel of clay on the wheel is to a sculptor or the mixing of oil paints on a palette is to a painter.
And when each day promises a return to these delights, how much greater and endlessly rewarding is the artistic life you’ve chosen.
Not that being an artist is without its share of frustrations or fallow periods when self-doubt creeps in and threatens to throw a cloud over even the sunniest of days. But the solution when this happens, I’m convinced, remains the same:
Take a deep breath. Maybe revisit some of the issues of this magazine. And remind yourself again what it is you love about art and about the creative process itself.
If you find you’re putting too much pressure on yourself, if you’re wasting your time and energy comparing yourself to others, if you’re spending too much time on social media when you should be sipping tea, playing music, and making something…
It’s time to take up the tools of your craft again and spend some time simply playing, rediscovering the fun in all this, and reminding yourself just how much you love the process of creating something for the simple joy of it all.
An artistic life is a magical life in so many ways. But only when we see its blessings for what they are and continually fall back in love with all the little things that go into it each day.”
~Sebastian
Yes, words of inspiration from Sebastian Michaels, words that give me a bit of a kick in the you know where. So, back at it again. Stay tuned for more.