Getting over creative blocks

When thinking about creative blocks, I like to think of them as part of the creative process. Sometimes you just need to walk away and let whatever is stuck "marinade" a little in your head, I find it most of the time it works itself out.

I'd like to share some great resources though. I love books on creativity, and here are two that I love:

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
I got this book as a gift from a friend and it resonated with me very much. It talks about the "P" word (Procrastination) - a huge creative block alot of the time!

The Dip By Seth Godin
This is a new book that just came out recently. The tag line is "A little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick." Its an interesting concept and I like his fresh approach to creative blocks or whatever you face in life.

Both of these authors are interviewed over at the Accidental Creative, one of my favorite podcasts to listen to while working. Very inspirational, I reccommend checking it out! -Jannie

Jannie's even older work

I thought I would show EVEN OLDER work. I found these sitting in my closet. They are from my art school days when I was still working in gouache and collage. On the left is a self portrait (as you can see, the chicken-obsession was already there) and on the right one of my better pieces in gouache from an illustration concepts class.

I've never quite felt like I've mastered painting. I have an image in my mind and when I try to translate it in paint, it never quite works out the way I want it to. With the computer, its alot easier. Although I do miss collaging alot. I suppose I can collage in photoshop but I don't think it would be the same.

Jenn's Sketchbook Sneak Peek

Last week everyone post a page from their sketch books. Oh well, better late than never, right? Here's a page of faces that I doodled while watching TV last week.

Paula's Old Work/New Work

We decided this week to share and discuss our older work verses our newer/latest work. I honestly a bit stumped on how to do that without writing a novel as I've been working as an illustrator since '91 (What is that then...16 years?), and my style has been all over the map in that amount of time. But looking through slews of pieces, both on the computer and in my flat files, I finally narrowed it down to just taking one specific subject (in this case, a bear) and showing how I've illustrated it at various points in time.

Up first is a bear done for a CD cover back around '93. I've always worked in at least two styles--the line art and then the more rendered art, which you see in the two bears on the left. The Valentine bear was done recently, also in a painterly-ish, rendered style. The bears on the right are in pen & ink and wash, a style I highly favor working in these days. What has changed in both styles over the years? The biggest change would be moving from working with traditional mediums on illustration board to working on the computer. As for other changes, with the rendered style, I don't use black line art as my base and then paint on top of that. But I do continue in my never-ending quest to be loose and free with my pieces, whatever style I'm working in. With CD cover bear, I attempted that by using lots of paint splatter. I still will use a paint splatter effect in my work, but it's been toned down a lot. With the line art bears on the top-right, I'm working tightly and concerned with lines being in their place. Guitar Bear on the bottom-right is more loose and relaxed.

Which ever style I'm working in I always have the desire for my work to be less-polished and less-refined, yet I'm always fighting this something that insists on making things tight and polished. But I'll keep working on it and hopefully, someday I'll get it to where it's just natural.

Jenn's Old Work/New Work

I dug through my old papers and discovered the first greeting card designs I did. I never sold any of these first designs. But I did learn about a lot of things... like rejection letters. This lion was done before I knew about Adobe and Wacom tablets and all that good stuff. This was done with Prismacolors on drafting vellum. This was probably around 1998?

I still use drafting vellum but I've ditched the colored pencils. I could never get the colors as vibrant as I wanted with pencils. I know some artists that do amazing work with colored pencil (Paula Pertile for one) but I just don't have the patience. Now I scan in the pencil drawing (usually on vellum) and then do all the color in Photoshop. I always liked this little lion so a few years later (2004 maybe?), I repainted him in Photoshop. By the way, I did sell the Photoshop version.



And here's an even more recent lion (2007). The colors are more muted because it's suppose to be dawn in the image. I like to think my color sense has improved over the years. I didn't spend as much time on this lion fur details but at least I did give him the proper number of toes.

Jannie's Old work/New work

Digging around my old computer, I came across this illo back from 2003. Yes, your first question might be, "why are the people in weird colors?" And I answer, "Who knows what the heck I was thinking?" I didn't think much of it then but now looking back, its a good laugh. I had this in my portfolio! Good rule of thumb for work in the children's market: they like to see diversity but usually "normal" skin colors are preferable. Unless you are Gary Baseman. Then you can do whatever color kids you want and its still awesome.
So here is a recent piece. Finally, real skin colors! I am making a huge conscious effort to limit my color palette and pick less primary and pastel colors. Also, there are more shadows and depth than my old piece. Although I am still striving for more of that.

I've come a long way since 4 years ago!

Old work / new work

When we talked about comparing old work to new work in our blog I thought I was going to show 2 pictures made several years apart. I started looking at older work, and found out that the biggest change in my illustrations happened from 2005-2006. One of the reasons is that in 2006 I started working with acrylic paints (before that I only worked with watercolors), and I really worked on improving my portfolio for the children's market. I still like a lot of the pictures I painted in 2005, and I even like some of my really old pictures, but my style has definitely improved since then.

It's fun to see these 2 illustrations next to each other. I like that they're based on similar ideas.