Monthly Archives: December 2020

Top Ten Articles – December 2020

Well, it’s the end of the month – and the year – so I thought that I’d do my usual thing of collecting a list of links to the ten best articles about making art, writing etc… that I’ve posted here over the past month, plus a few honourable mentions too.

All in all, although I experienced some writer’s block this month (and my article buffer was down to about 3-4 months at the time of writing, on the 8th September), I really like how a lot of this month’s articles turned out 🙂 The earlier parts of the month had more of an emphasis on the horror genre and the mid-late parts had more of an emphasis on art and inspiration.

As for the future, although there will probably be another art tutorial tomorrow, I’ve also been experimenting with writing slightly shorter articles in order to both reduce writer’s block and to keep up with my article schedule. Sorry in advance about this, but hopefully it means that I’ll stay on schedule for as long as possible.

On a lighter note, I found myself briefly returning to reviewing novels again 🙂 Although I only reviewed four novels, it was very much a “Quality over quantity” thing – with all four being amazing. If I had to choose a favourite, it would possibly be Susan Hill’s “The Woman In Black” – but I also really enjoyed Tade Thompson’s “Making Wolf“, Jodi Taylor’s “Plan For The Worst” and Shaun Hutson’s out-of-print novelisation of “The Terminator” too.

Anyway, here are the lists 🙂 Enjoy 🙂

Top Ten Articles – December 2020:

– “Do Motivational Quotes And Slogans Actually ‘Work’ For Creative Stuff?”
– “Three Possible Reasons Why Your ‘Failed’ Art Becomes Popular”
– “How Artists Find Their ‘Process’ – A Ramble”
– “The Three Phases Of Early-Mid 2000s US Horror Films”
– “Three Ways To Keep Your Art Practice Going During Uninspired Times”
– “Three Differences Between The Detective And Slasher Genres”
– “Three Differences Between Comedy Horror And Dark Comedy”
– “One Important Problem-Solving Lesson That Making Art Taught Me”
– “Three Tips For Making ‘Edgy’ Horror Scary”
– “Three Tips For Using Art Documentaries And Interviews To Get Inspired”

Honourable mentions:

– “Three Reasons Why Ghost Stories Are Seen As ‘More Respectable’ Than Other Horror Novels”
– “Three Ways To Deal With ‘I Was Better At It In The Past’ Creative Worries”
– “One Tip For Creating City Backgrounds Using GIMP 2.10 (Plus Bonus Art!)”
– “Four Ways To Recover From A Surprisingly Scary Horror Movie Or Novel“

One Tip For Creating City Backgrounds Using GIMP 2.10 (Plus Bonus Art!)

Well, it’s been a little while since I wrote an art tutorial – so I thought that I’d talk about a cool technique for quickly adding detail to city backgrounds with version 2.10 of a free open-source program called the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) that I found whilst preparing some of the daily art that should appear here in September.

This technique works best in cyberpunk-style sci-fi art and possibly also in retro “1980s-90s America” style artwork too. And, yes, I’ve basically made an extra piece of digital art just for this post – so, if you just want to see the full-size picture, scroll down to the very end of the article.

Begin by adding the silhouetted outlines of your buildings to the background. You can do this by setting the background colour to black (click on the bottom of the two squares on the left-hand side of the screen), then using the “free select” tool (the icon looks like a lasso on the menu in the upper-left hand corner) to draw the outline of the buildings:

Setting the background colour to black and using the free select tool (upper left-hand corner) to draw the outlines of some angular futuristic buildings.

After you’ve selected an area, click on the “Elipse select tool” beside the “free select tool” to lock in the selection. The outline of the selected area should go from a solid line to an animated/moving one (don’t ask me why, but it doesn’t seem to work if I don’t do this):

I’m not sure if this is the only way to get the selection to work properly, but it’s how I do it.

Then just hit “Delete”. Since the background colour is set to black, it will fill these areas with black. if you have a plain/solid colour background, then you can also use the “fill” tool for this too. Keep the area selected after you’ve done this.

Filling in the silhouetted buildings.

After this, select the “Paintbrush” tool from the menu in the upper-left corner. Be sure not to confuse it with the “Pencil tool” beside it (seriously, the icons look fairly similar at a glance). Once you have selected the “Paintbrush” tool, go to the menu on the right-hand side of the screen and select the brush type that looks like a giant orange ball (called “Sparks”).

Selecting the “Paintbrush” tool (upper left-hand corner) and the “Sparks” brush from the menu on the right-hand side of the screen.

After you’ve done this, look for the “Opacity” and “Size” sliders on the tool menu for the paintbrush. Although you’ll have to experiment to get the levels right for your picture (since it can depend on things like image size, distance etc…), I’d recommend setting the “Opacity” fairly low (eg: at about 20-30%) and also setting the size reasonably low (eg: I set it to “44.33” for this example) – but, again, be sure to experiment until you get the right levels for the picture you are making.

After you’ve done this, just scribble over the buildings with the brush. Sticking to using horizontal, vertical, diagonal and/or zig-zag lines tends to work best here – since it gives the buildings more of an “orderly” look than just randomly scribbling over them will:

Adding lights to the building using the “Sparks” brush.

After this, you are basically done. If you want to, you can either just finish by removing the selection (by either pressing “CTRL + SHIFT + A” or going into the “Select” menu at the top of the screen and clicking “None”) or, if you want to do more, you can invert the selection (by going into the “Select” menu at the top of the screen and clicking “Invert”) and then use the other paintbrushes and tools to add detail to the sky/distant background too. Like this:

Inverting the selection (“Select” > “Invert”) and then using the other brushes and tools to add extra background detail.

And, since this example picture seemed good enough to actually finish – here is the full-size version, with a few extra details and elements added to it. Enjoy 🙂

“Future City Bonus Artwork” by C. A. Brown

The “Perfection” Paradox – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk about one of the most interesting and paradoxical parts of learning any creative skill. I am, of course, talking about the idea of “perfection”. Every artist, writer, musician etc… strives to eventually be “perfect” at what they do – yet “perfection” is something that can never, and probably should never, be reached.

There are two main reasons for this. First of all, “perfection” isn’t just one quality but a collection of different (and sometimes contradictory) qualities. A creative work may be “perfect” on a purely technical level, but not express much emotion or personality. A creative work might make many brilliantly profound points about the world that linger in the audience’s imaginations and provoke lots of fascinating thoughts, but the characters in it might be wooden and two-dimensional.

“Perfection” is a collection of qualities, rather than a single quality. This of course, makes it several times more difficult to achieve than it might initially seem to be – because you can spend ages practicing and perfecting your skills in one area, only to be let down by the things you haven’t had as much time to practice.

Secondly, “perfection” is a relative and subjective quality. Not only does everyone have a slightly different idea of what “perfect” is – but it is also shaped by things like context and experience too. For example, even if you make a really amazing painting that you think is “perfect” – you probably won’t think that it is “perfect” a few years later, because you’ll have had even more practice and be an even better painter than you were when you made your “perfect” painting.

Likewise, when members of the audience look at what you create – they will be judging it in comparison to everything they have ever seen before and in comparison to what they think “perfection” looks like. Since these things differ from person to person, there is no real way to create an objectively “perfect” creative work. Likewise, if you do somehow reach “perfection” – then where do you go from there?

Yet, although it is an unreachable and unrealistic thing, the idea of “perfection” is still important if you create things – because it can be a major source of motivation that can really help you to improve your skills.

If you dream of making a perfect piece of art or writing a perfect novel, then this will push you to actually put in the practice that you need to get closer to this high skill level. Likewise, seeing a “perfect” thing made by someone else will also inspire you to dream of – one day – being able to make something like that yourself when you have practiced enough.

But, for all the good that this does, it can also have the opposite effect too. Too much perfectionism means that you’ll never actually finish anything that you start making – because there is always something that can be improved or refined.

Putting pressure on yourself to create “perfect” things can fill you with creativity-inihibiting anxiety that can easily cause “writer’s block” or “artist’s block”. If you’re terrified of failing or making something “not perfect” then you might not even start making anything.

Idolising “perfect” creative works made by other people can, if you aren’t careful, also inhibit your creativity and leave you with a discouraged “I’ll never be as good as they are! I shouldn’t even try!” feeling – which, of course, isn’t a good thing.

So, yes, “perfection” is a complicated and paradoxical thing. It is an impossible thing that everyone tries to achieve, and it is something that can both help and hinder your creativity in equal measure. So, what should you do?

First of all, acknowledge that what you create isn’t “perfect” and that this isn’t an entirely bad thing. It means that you still have room to grow and improve. You still have the chance to surprise yourself and try new things. Likewise, not being too focused on “perfection” (and instead focusing on, for example, keeping up your practice schedule) means that you’ll be more likely to actually start and finish the things you create. This is a good thing.

Secondly, see the times when you don’t create something “perfect” as learning opportunities. Even if a failed attempt at creating something just teaches you a bit more about why you feel “uninspired” or shows you what you can’t do at the moment, it will always teach you something. As paradoxical as it may sound – every “perfect” thing that you see is the result of literally hundreds of past failures. Without failure, perfection cannot exist.

Finally, focus on perfection when it makes you feel excited, motivated and eager to practice – but don’t focus on it if it starts to make you feel discouraged, inadequate or useless. This is easier said than done, but if you can get into this mindset – then it can really help.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Inspiration Feels Like Curiosity – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk about one important part of “being inspired” that can easily be overlooked when you are looking for inspiration. I am, of course, talking about curiosity. Although inspiration can sometimes involve suddenly having a fully-formed idea for a piece of art or writing appear in your mind, it’s often a bit more subtle than this.

Often, inspiration feels more like curiosity than anything else. Often, a moment of inspiration won’t be a fully-formed idea but an intriguingly mysterious one that makes you want to “find out more” by creating things.

For example, a series of digital art pieces that I made a few months ago (and will probably post here next May) was prompted by thinking something like “I wonder what an early-mid 2000s survival horror videogame made by me would look like?“.

Even though I couldn’t make the game itself, I was curious enough to make about twelve large pieces of digital art based on this idea within the space of about four days. Seriously, it really caught me by surprise. Here’s a detail from one of the pictures:

A cartoon image of a woman wearing a yellow anorak and a red backpack standing in front of a portrait of a snarling vampire. There is a large hole in the green wall beside the portrait, showing rainy weather and the silhouettes of old towers.

This is a detail from one of the digital art pieces I made, the full art series should appear here between the 8-19th May 2021.

Likewise, one of the reasons why I’ve been feeling so “uninspired” with these daily articles recently is because of what I had initially considered to be a “failed” project. Several days before preparing the first draft of this article, I’d been toying with the idea of writing a “weird” alternate blog – sort of a more introspective one with a heavy focus on various spiritual/philosophical concepts that absolutely fascinate me.

So, I decided to write a couple of “practice” articles, had the usual “Whatever will people think?!” worries and then decided to write the project off as a failure – only to then find myself returning to it regularly and preparing “practice” articles at a speed, quantity and level of inspiration that I haven’t seen in at least a year or two.

Even though I’m still not sure whether I’ll eventually post any of them online or not, I still felt incredibly inspired to write articles in this genre because I am curious about what these articles will look like (and I’ve surprised myself a few times already) and because I’m really fascinated by the subject matter.

This, by the way, is a good sign that you’re feeling inspired. If you feel compelled to make something – even though it distracts you from what you “should” be creating and is something that you probably won’t show anyone else – then you are feeling inspired.

So, yes, feeling inspired is often less about suddenly having a fully-formed idea and more about having an idea that makes you feel curious enough to want to explore it a bit more. Even if it is, in practical terms, a “waste of time”. Curiosity is an incredibly powerful thing.

Plus, one of the great things about these types of inspired ideas is that they will usually result in something with a bit more personality, originality and uniqueness too – mostly because, if your curiosity can be satisfied by looking at something that already exists, then you probably won’t end up making something. You’ll just end up reading or watching something that someone else has made.

No, the best type of inspiration is when you have a sudden feeling of curiosity about a question that only you can find the answer to. Whether this is thinking of a genre that doesn’t exist yet or, much more commonly, wondering what something would look like in your own “style”, the very best type of inspiration is the one that gives you a question that can only be answered by creating things.

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Sorry for the short article, but I hope it was useful 🙂

Three Observations About Feeling Uninspired

Well, since I was feeling uninspired at the time of writing, I thought that I’d write about – you guessed it – uninspiration. Although anyone who creates things regularly will probably recognise some of the things on this list, I thought that I’d look at some of the more unusual elements of feeling uninspired.

1) It can just be boredom in disguise: One interesting thing about feeling uninspired is that it can actually be more about boredom than anything else. If you’ve been creating the same kind of thing for a while, then you can end up feeling “uninspired” because it has gone from being something interesting to something “ordinary” and “dull”. It feels less relevant to you than it once did. It feels like a chore.

One of the best ways to tell if this is the cause of your feelings of uninspiration is if the idea of making random personal projects, making random fan art, writing something different etc… seems a lot more “relevant” and interesting than whatever you are “supposed” to be making.

If you feel “inspired” when you are creating something “silly”, “personal” or “different” – but feel completely uninspired when you are making “proper art” or doing “proper writing” – then your feelings of uninspiration are probably caused by boredom rather than an actual lack of ideas. After all, you are feeling inspired – just not to make the things that you were previously making.

Sometimes, enjoying these other things can re-ignite your feelings of enthusiasm for your main creative works. Sometimes it is just a refreshing break from an increasingly dull routine. Sometimes you might even find ways to incorporate elements from these “irrelevant” side-projects into what you are “supposed” to be creating.

Still, whatever it is, if you find yourself feeling highly inspired by something totally irrelevant to what you are supposed to be creating, then your “uninspiration” is actually just boredom in disguise.

2) It can mean you haven’t been in the audience enough: Sometimes, feeling uninspired can simply be the result of not being in the audience enough recently. One of the best ways to get inspired is to look at other creative works, since these will often prompt thoughts, daydreams and ideas which you can later filter through your imagination and shape into original ideas.

Likewise, if you are creating things, then regularly seeing how other people do things can teach you all sorts of lessons about things like writing techniques, colour palettes, composition, visual storytelling techniques etc… which will probably prompt you to want to try out all of these techniques during practice or possibly even to try to do something interestingly different with them.

In addition to all of this, being fascinated or enthralled by watching, playing or reading something can be a valuable reminder that creative works are important things that mean something. This can be useful if you are feeling the “making this stuff is completely pointless” type of uninspiration.

So, sometimes, not being in the audience enough recently can be one reason why you are feeling uninspired.

3) Inspiration is optional: Yes, it is easier to create things when you are feeling inspired and there’s a good chance that they will either be better or – at the very least – feel more fun and meaningful to make. But, you can still make things when you are feeling uninspired. Seriously, don’t let uninspiration stop you from practicing your art or writing or whatever.

Yes, what you create won’t be as good. You might even have to use set exercises, repeat things that you’ve already made or just make something that isn’t as good as what you usually create, but you can still create things when you are feeling uninspired. But why should you do this?

There are a few reasons – but the main ones are that it makes you less afraid of suddenly feeling uninspired and that it also reduces the amount of time that you feel uninspired for. Seriously, if you still “show up” and practice when you are feeling uninspired, then you will gradually find that your uninspired times will begin to last for less time than they used to do.

In addition to giving you more confidence, one other reason for this is that grappling with “artist’s block” or “writer’s block” on a regular basis (rather than letting it defeat you and put you off from creating anything) will not only push you to come up with all sorts of clever techniques that will allow you to keep making stuff but it will also help you to understand why it happens too. You’ll begin to spot patterns in it or possibly begin to distinguish between different types of uninspiration – and all of this extra knowledge can help you to come up with better ways to deal with it too.

So, yes, inspiration is optional. You can – and possibly even should – make things when you are feeling uninspired too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂