Interview with concept artist Mária Zborovska

"You need to get comfortable with struggle and failure. Because people don't realize that 99% of image making looks like shit." ~Maria Zborovoska

The Sketchbook Series - Nadezda

MY NOTES
~Sketchbooks are filled for discovering self



~Nadezda keeps different sketchbooks of different formats and papers and takes different ones for different feelings or purposes.



~She keeps loose paper of many types and formats to work on as well and collects loose sketches in boxes.



~has a theater background that influences her work. Takes many posed model photos which she "directs" with some form of story involved. Theater focuses on the human condition.



~Sketching once a day can mean getting one thing a day for yourself to make yourself happy, in spite of whatever else happens in the day



~"Artistic depression is a price we pay for the immense joy that we experience during the creation times. So if you want to make good art, you have to be able to cope with these dark days. And I guess when it happens repetitively, because we keep creating, we keep confronting those dark places, you just figure out your own system to handle them. As artists, we should consciously accept, because sometime you go some places so dark, but then you have to tell yourself, It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. It's just one of those times of the month I guess, when you fall into this dark paces I guess, but then you don't just sit in the room and cry, you just okay, I'm gonna go for a walk, or okay I'm gonna go meet my friends, or whatever tickles your fancy. i think a sketch a day keeps the psychotherapist away."



~results you don't like: Face the page. Ripping it out means you didn't face it. there is a certain feeling of reward when you look back at project. evident even in the type of mark making



~Consider the energy of mark making. avoid static even over-all rendering. mark variety/ mood



~Working with fellow creators as models means they will not think it's so weird and will understand innately more of what you are looking at in terms of pose and gesture and story. Some people are more innate emotive actors than others who are more awkward to pose. Some artists light a set or light miniatures for reference. Posing sessions can be like "let's play dress up today"



~Nadezda didn't have success with mixing fantasy elements with photo elements in photoshop because there is some part of reality lost in that translation.



~Looks for weird and grotesque and strange inspiration from off putting things.



~spray fixes her drawings



~accepts happy accidents



~Sketches are usually a recording of something going on in the brain. even if it's ugly, it informs you for future work.



~sketches take way less time than a painting, so it's a way to test out multiple references and see what is happening or if it holds up. Some references make good sketches, others are meant to be paintings.



~N. experienced 2 different educational systems. One had lots of gesture and fast poses and drawing. Then a separate school had long drawings and detailed renderings. N. benefited from training both ways. As a young artist, experiment with everything, listen to all your instructors with a grain of salt and go out ans test it yourself and discover. Best way to grow is always to put yourself outside of your comfort zone.



~but a comfort zone can also be a great place to fall back to when things are uncertain or falling apart. You can go to the comforter. Make a conscious effort to choose- am I pushing myself, or do I need to go to a comfortable place now?



~finds she needs different studio/working environments for painting than for sketching.



~Uses music to put herself in a repeated mood for repeated results.



~References a podcast called Bulletproof Radio from a show aired a couple years back about storytelling. NEURAL COUPLING scientific evidence of similar brain patterns between the storyteller and the listener. (here is a link to a pdf referencing this concept https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/32/14425.full.pdf ) Storytellers and listeners are actually syncing up their brains.

Masters of Storytelling | Comic-Con@Home 2020

~"You just write about whatever is just burning to get out of you. Don't worry about writing something you think everybody wants to read. They'll wanna read the best thing that you can write, that you need to write, right then." -Ed Brubaker



~Try to write the best story that you can. Even if it's niche and weird if, it doesn't sell and no one likes it at least you made yourself happy. But if you tried to write what you think others want and it doesn't fly, you are left with nothing. You can't predict the market.

Whatever you do, someone's not going to like it, so who cares? (Alex de Campi)



~Do you tell people your story ideas?

Many creators do not tell friends and family about their story ideas or their work. It's not always easy for them to relate.

As for early story phase, the story is "pre-conscious" and it's uncertain if it's a thing and difficult to share and describe especially outside of the creator circles where others help, encourage, nurture and understand the process.

~Sharing your nascent ideas with others is a vulnerable place. It's too easy for your creativity to be killed by very little feedback. BUT must practice sharing ideas with other creators who understand process. (Emma Kubert)



~It's good to have a second project to "warm your hands on" when you're avoiding the work that's due. (Matt Fraction)



~"The best thing I've written is whatever's coming next and the worst thing I've written is whatever just came out." -Matt Fraction



~"Daydream about what you'll get right next time" -Matt Fraction



~Fraction keeps one physical notebook per project to keep his thoughts together and not forget things.



@~38-41 min
On plotting a story arc:

"The metaphor I always use before I get started is we're gonna take a road trip without a map but I have a general understanding of the geography. Say we're gonna drive from California to New York. If you get to desert you're going the wrong way and if you don't cross the Mississippi in two or three days you're off track. So I kind of have landmarks. It's infuriating because it always feels in the last third like it was disorganized or lazy and all I see is what I could have done differently and all that, but at the same time, you can call audibles and steer into the strength of a book and veer into Chicago (to grossly extend the metaphor). If I pre-wrote it before I got to see things and live in that world visually, I think I'd miss opportunities to write not just to the strength of the artist, but to the book itself. It's a tonal thing. There's a joy in the result of the collaboration where it's not just yours and it's not just your partner's. It's ours. It's always instructive for me." ~Matt Fraction



~Architect vs Gardener writing styles. Gardening= joy in the discovery, even though there is some intentionality in the layout and the selection.



But even people who say they don't outline or plot ahead are secretly working out things in their story always in their head- framing and outlining in one way or another.



Plan ahead, but also leave room for poetry and changes of mind. Joy of discovery.

How to be as Good at DIGITAL ART as you are at TRADITIONAL ART

Lots of good stuff here, but my favorite point:
Prioritize exploring your technique over  churning out finished work
Developing your technique needs to take priority over creating content when developing as a digital artist.

Once you've got a technique you're comfortable with, you can turn out work more naturally.

Cons2020 Six Love Types

While much of this talk of polling people about their favorite characters or shows is more cute than useful (this is serious 'research?'), I did find some really useful thoughts about archetype love in characters. I'm not sure how exactly these love types linked with the research they shared. In this respect I found the talk kind of lacking in direction. Was it intended to evaluate the way people feel love towards their characters? Why was it phrased in types of partner love then?

Often times I know I connect with characters for a wide variety of reasons- because they express something about me that I struggle with, because they're a cathartic reference to my shadow self, because they're surprisingly different than myself, because they're clever or adorable or funny. Why is this talk using love-types and then talking about favorite character polls when there are a lot more metrics for choosing a favorite?

Or, if it was supposed to be about love types, why did it explore favorite character polls at all? Why not take some character examples and explore the love partnership intentions they laid out in the beginning?

In any case, the most useful part of the talk for me was the love-types. Because I had only seen HALF of these outlined before (Eros, Storge, Agape) but what was new to me was the more *pathological* love approaches (Ludos, Pragma, Mania). Of *course* I've encounters and explored these in life and in fiction, but I don't know how I never ran across their labels before!

Sometimes I think the best stuff from talks like these (YES even kind of middling talks that you maybe can shrug off 90% of as fluff) are things you know about already in you gut, but someone puts a name or a description to it or cuts it open on the dissection tray for you to look closer and you go "Yes, that's right. I know this" but you never knew it quite like this. These are my favorite nuggets and why I watch stuff like this.

6 love-types
~Ludos (aka Ludus) - Conquest/ Game playing love
"I believe that what my partner (lover) doesn't know about me won't hurt him/her."

~Pragma - Practically, Logical, Shopping list love
"One consideration in choosing my partner (lover) was how he/ she would reflect on my career."

~Mania - obsessive, possessive and dependent love
"If my partner (lover) ignores me for awhile, I sometimes do stupid things to try to get his/ her attention back."

~Eros - Romance, Passion
"I feel that my partner and I were meant for each other."

~Storge - Based on friendship
"Our friendship merged gradually into love over time."

~Agape - Selfless love
"I would endure all things for the sake of my partner (lover)"

Cons2020 Musical Scores vid

Although I usually am focused more on visual development, this was fascinating to listen to! I appreciated hearing each one of their own types of immersion in the genres personally, and about their favorite characters or themes that they've worked on. It's also really cool to see them each in their own studio environment, something you wouldn't have gotten on a panel typically.

Some more take-aways I appreciate in the arts in general coming from this vid:

~Get your panic out before you start the work. Once you've started, just be in it. Don't choke yourself with the stress about it. Being part of the process itself relieves anxiety.

~Experimenting is a great stage and a necessary one, and then you're more prepared for the final, tuned in work (in music scores: "Working to picture" matching it up with the film itself.)

~Sampling/ influences/ reference is part of the business. Making unanticipated connections or fresh mixes is itself something new and original.

~When you step back from the work and see it in it's final product, you might experience it apart from yourself as the creator, even to the point of not recognizing it as your own and giving it deserved appreciation as a work unto itself.

~Studio Artists of all types can experience performance anxiety. Some of us are not performers, just meant to create in our studios. But there is a "high" that comes from stage performance.

~Creating alone as a rule can leave a desire for collaborative art when you can get it.

~A dream project could be something that is such a challenge you don't know if you can even do it. It stretches you and forces exploration and growth.

"The thing that I want to do doesn't exist yet, but I really want it to happen. Like, I'm sorry that I can't tell you what it is."

Checking values while painting in color

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhb2cucqgPE

Great tidbit of advice for working on digital painting:
Paint in color from the beginning, but use a black and white adjustment layer, and turn it on and off as you work to check the values!

Brilliant! I'm going to start using this today! I've been trying to work starting in greyscale and then colorizing it, but the grays just never go right and I'm awful at color filter settings. This method sounds so intuitive and simple! Thanks, Schoolism and Alexandria Neonkis!

surprisingly perfect low-end

Sometimes I find a perfect drawing implement when I'm cleaning up kid art supplies. Right now my favorite is a Cra-Z-Art pink pencil claiming to be "berri" it's just the right balance of dry and creamy lead for thumb nailing. I'm already sad that it won't last forever. I have found others in blues, reds, and browns. Most yellow and greens are too waxy though.

Next I want to collect up the markers that are half dried out and see if they help me with sketching and planning stages.

Today I learned

Today I learned the scapula has a "spine" and the deltoid connects from that ridge.

 

 

Something Gained

It's gone. I had it in my basement since I bought it, back only God knows when, sometime just before I graduated from New Paltz. I bought it in a panic, thinking that if I didn't get a kiln right away, I would let my skills go to waste and become "just" a mother.

I didn't have the space to set it up. When we tore down the collapsing garage on the property, we didn't have the means to build a new one like I had hoped. So there was no where to set this up. Instead it stood alone for the better part of a decade in that corner, as a reminder of making brash choices out of fear.

I tried to resell it, but it was difficult. I would get a lot of responses to the ad, but since I honestly could not say it worked, having never run it myself, no one bought it even at half the price I bought it for, even when I knocked the price down further than that. I even once gave it to a friend for free, but he never came to get it as his life situation changed.

So I gave it away again last week, to a Ceramics major in central Connecticut. She has a garage to set it up in, and professional help to assist her with any of the wiring repair it needs. For an hour before and an hour after, I trembled. I'm not sure what it was exactly I was trembling about. Except that it was the most definitive marker in the choices I've made in my personal development in the arts. Not only to let go of ceramic craft in favor of image-making and narrative, but also as evidence of the change in me, the art of myself, the character arc that is a broad motion from fear-reactive to instead being ready to run in the rain of what's happening now. The personal development that sees limitations as the definition of possibilities and can dream new dreams without decrying the old ones, but rather weaving the threads from everything that is still the history of me. From anxiety to examination to delight.

Thank you, kiln I never used. You were worth every penny. I can't wait to see what you do in your next life.

Stop and Copy

Give a Hand

A few images from my hundred hand sketches. I drew a lot, but they weren't all good. These were my favorites.