This is a digitally-edited painting based on a photo I took whilst I was a passenger during a rainy car journey near Waterlooville last March.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Waterlooville – Art Deco (March 2023)” by C. A. Brown
This is the third digitally-edited painting in a short three-painting series based on some photos I took of a relative’s old conservatory before it was demolished and renovated last spring. When I was taking the photos, there was the sound of rain hammering on the old, leaky roof and the whole place had a slightly unreal atmosphere to it, like literally being in a low-budget indie horror computer game. And, yes, this experience was the inspiration for part of a cynical sci-fi horror story I wrote last year.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Other End Of The Old Conservatory (March 2023)” by C. A. Brown
This is the second digitally-edited painting in a short three-painting series based on some photos I took of a relative’s old conservatory before it was demolished and renovated last spring. When I was taking the photos, there was the sound of rain hammering on the old, leaky roof and the whole place had a slightly unreal atmosphere to it, like literally being in a low-budget indie horror computer game. And, yes, this experience was the inspiration for part of a cynical sci-fi horror story I wrote last year.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Old Conservatory Workroom (March 2023)” by C. A. Brown
Well, I thought that I’d talk about how there are many ways to be an artist. This was something I ended up thinking about in mid-late December last year after making the foolish mistake of comparing myself to another artist on the internet.
This particular artist’s Youtube videos are – in a word – cool. They have the sort of “dark psychedelia” aesthetic that I love, but with some cool mid-late 1990s elements as well. In their videos, they seemed to personify the idea of a “free-spirited artist” as well. And whilst I loved the videos, I made the utterly stupid mistake of comparing myself to this artist.
Needless to say, I felt staid, dull, boring and pretty much every other similar adjective you can think of. Whilst my art does include a lot of “dark psychedelia”, my art style tends to be a lot more “precise” with more of a focus on drawing. I have this weird convoluted process involving waterproof ink, watercolour pencils, a scanner and old/open-source image editing programs (eg: GIMP, Jasc Paint Shop Pro 6, MS Paint 5.1 etc...).
In my real life, I’m literally the opposite of a “bubbly extrovert”. I’m also the sort of camera-shy person who likes writing articles with long words in them – something I picked up from reading old books when I was a teenager – rather than joyously enthusing to camera. Yes, I’m probably “eccentric”, but not in the sort of way that looks #trendy on social media.
But, yes, I felt miserable and bad about myself. Weirdly, the thing that cheered me up the most was actually looking through all of the fan art and personal art that I made last year. Seeing all of my favourite movies, videogames, Youtube videos etc… in my own unique art style reassured me that there was something to my art. That, despite not really being “free-spirited” or “spontaneous”, I was still an artist. Likewise, my personal art was filled with all sorts of introspection, experiences and things which actually seriously meant something to me – and it was art that literally only I could make. If I wasn’t an artist, it wouldn’t exist.
One of the important things about art is self-expression. Whilst artists take influence from each other, each artist is a different person and this is what makes art special. Even when an artist tries to copy something, hints of their own uniqueness still usually shine through. Even when an artist uses a common art style – like manga or realism or western comics – their personality can still shine through in all sorts of other ways. Whether it is what they choose to draw, whether it is the type of palettes or themes or whatever they focus on more. The whole point of art is that it isn’t standardised. Variety is the spice of life.
And this goes for artists too. Some artists are free-spirited extroverts who turn their entire life into a work of art. Some artists are ridiculously boring. Some are in it for money or popularity. Some couldn’t care less about either of these things. Some artists are “positive vibes only” type people and others love to make gloomy gothic horror artwork. Some artists paint giant canvases with high-grade oil paints, other artists make small semi-digital paintings using a weird bodged-together mixture of art supplies….
“Sorcerous City 1983” by C. A. Brown
I should probably address the elephant in the room though – A.I. This is a complicated one. It requires far fewer creative decisions than human-made art does, and is therefore less expressive and less satisfying to make, but I guess that my earlier point about common art styles… maybe partially, but not completely… applies to it too. It’s impossible to create a truly unique style with A.I. (because it’s the machine making the decisions, relying on it’s “training data” etc… ).
Yes, if someone has their own distinctive sensibility and spends time refining a prompt and creating variation after variation until they end up with something that vaguely expresses the idea, mental image etc… they had before they wrote the prompt – then maybe it’s something vaguely adjacent to “art”. But, whilst there would be an underlying element of self-expression, the machine has still made a ton of creative decisions… and it’s like a watered-down version of what the artist could have produced on their own (with enough practice, learning etc...).
And, yes, comparing your own art to what A.I. can create is even more stupid than comparing yourself to other artists. Seriously, this… almost… put me off of making art early last year – and, ironically, the very fan art which reassured me earlier was a project I started in order to rebuild my confidence and get more practice after this. So, there are ways to recover if your artistic confidence is shaken by whatever an artificial intelligence can make.
But the main point in all of this is that – if you actually make the art yourself, rather than using an A.I. – there’s no “right way” to be an artist, for the simple reason that the uniqueness of each artist is what makes art Art.
Even if you really try to copy another artist, even down to using the same materials as them and trying to imitate their personality, then your copy will still be different because you are a different person. Art is about uniqueness. If there was a perfect, “standard” way to be an artist, then it wouldn’t be art. It would be something which has qualifications and rules and where “creativity” is heavily frowned upon.
————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
This is the first digitally-edited painting in a short three-painting series based on some photos I took of a relative’s old conservatory before it was demolished and renovated last spring. When I was taking the photos, there was the sound of rain hammering on the old, leaky roof and the whole place had a slightly unreal atmosphere to it, like literally being in a low-budget indie horror computer game. And, yes, this experience was the inspiration for part of a cynical sci-fi horror story I wrote last year.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Rainy Night In The Old Conservatory (March 2023)” by C. A. Brown
This is a digitally-edited painting based on a really fun 1980s style daydream (which was more of a mood, if I remember rightly) that I had last March and I really like how it turned out 🙂
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“1980s Daydream (March 2023)” by C. A. Brown
This is a late 1990s-style digitally-edited painting that I made after a moment of inspiration 🙂
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Rain Delight 1997” by C. A. Brown
This is a piece of digital art that I made (using GIMP) when I was feeling uninspired.
As usual, this picture is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Coast Perspective” by C. A. Brown
This is a digitally-edited painting that I made after a moment of inspiration 🙂
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Field Of View” by C. A. Brown
Well, since I couldn’t think of a better idea for an article, I thought that I’d talk briefly about why smaller sketchbooks are awesome. In the months before preparing this article in mid-late December last year, I’ve been using 9cm x 14cm (a little over 3.5 x 5.5 inches for my US readers) “Talens Art Creation” watercolour-compatible sketchbooks. Other sizes and brands of smaller sketchbook probably exist too. I initially just used these just for fan art, but I ended up switching to them for the original art that will start appearing here from about late November onwards.
And, although it took me a little while to adapt to such a tiny format – especially since I usually rule off about 3cm for writing stuff on (eg: title, notes, production date, when to post it here etc...) – it’s a lot better than I expected it to be. Of course, the best sketchbook size for you will depend on a host of factors, but I love the smaller format for several reasons. The main one is time – because there’s less area to fill with ink and paint, you can make more paintings more quickly.
I also love just how compact these sketchbooks are too. Like, I can have my original art sketchbook and my fan art sketchbook (which has turned into more of an “art diary” at the time of writing) sitting beside each other and they take up approximately the same amount of space as just one of the old A5 sketchbooks I used to use. They’re also more portable than a larger sketchbook, not that I really travel much though.
There’s capacity too. Whilst this probably varies depending on brand/manufacturer, the ones I use contain 80 sheets/160 pages. Yes, the style of binding means that at least a couple of pages near the beginning and end of the book are slightly thinner than the others. Yes, you can stretch out an A5 watercolour sketchbook – the cheaper ones usually have about 40-50 pages – by making two smaller paintings on the same page, by using both sides of each page etc… but it’s just easier and quicker to have one smaller page per painting.
Adapting to the smaller size was easier than I thought. A lot of this just involves choosing your waterproof ink pens carefully. I use a 0.2mm waterproof ink fine-liner pen for fine detail and either a 0.5mm or 0.7mm waterproof ink rollerball pen for heavier lines and stuff like that. One of the cool things about 0.2mm fine-liner pens is that, because of the tiny nib, they don’t actually use that much ink and therefore last for much longer than you might expect them to.
Likewise, the 9cm x 11cm painting area (after I’ve ruled off 3cm) requires you to think a bit more carefully about things like composition and also pushes you to focus slightly more on foreground detail (since there’s more space to add it to larger, closer things) too. It can feel a bit cramped at first if you’re used to making larger pieces of art, but I’m still surprised at how
Yes, tiny sketchbooks certainly aren’t suitable for every artist or even every type of art, but I’m still surprised at how well they work if you just want to make art for fun or want to speed up your art practice a little. Again, it takes a while to adapt to them and they do have limitations but they’re better than you might think.
————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
PekoeBlaze - the official blog 