How I Paint From Imagination

Well, I thought that I’d talk about painting from imagination today and walk you thought some of my thought processes when I do this.

Whilst some artists on the internet discourage painting and/or drawing from imagination and it’s one of the more difficult ways to make art – often requiring twice the effort for art that looks half as good – it’s something I have a lot of experience with (since I’ve been doing this regularly since 2012).

Yes, all of this practice probably came from a misconception that it was the “standard” way that artists make art (it isn’t) or a misunderstanding of what it is to “be original”. But, despite rediscovering fan art last year and also occasionally making things like still life paintings, going through phases of making paintings based on photos I’ve taken, drawing/painting self-portraits using a mirror etc… It is still something I seem to do a lot even if, the day before writing this article, it felt like a pointless and arduous chore.

But then, about half an hour before preparing this article back in mid-January, I got lucky and made a surprisingly good semi-digital painting from imagination 🙂 Here’s a full-size preview:

This is a full-size preview. The semi-digital painting should hopefully “officially” be posted here in early-mid May next year.

Whilst I occasionally know what I’m going to draw or paint before I start, this was one of the… many… occasions where I found myself staring at a blank sketchbook page with no idea what to paint. Sometimes I remedy this by just drawing a random shape with a 4H pencil and then just extrapolating from there but, for this one, I realised that it had been a couple of days since I made a “vintage fashion” style painting. So this was a starting point.

I sketched the outline of a head and lines for the character’s neck, shoulders and hips. As I started sketching the outline of a calf-length sleeveless dress – long enough to be “vintage” but short enough to be “practical” – I had my first moment of inspiration.

This inspiration was more of an overall mood than just an image. The feeling of watching a grainy old film from the 1970s/80s, showing a lady trudging through marshland near a farm on a grey day. A feeling that she was happy living there, that she enjoyed this place. Hints of the “cottagecore” aesthetic, but British and gloomier. The overall mood and context of this, distilled into a single emotion.

Given the weather and terrain, I decided to layer a turtleneck under the dress and give her a pair of Wellington boots. This looked “early-mid 1990s”, so I added a scribbled floral pattern to the dress. Then there was the rest of the character to design. For her hair, I went for a single plait laid over the shoulder, not only because I like this hairstyle but also because – from the right angle – it would cover one of the character’s eyes, sneakily avoiding the risk of misaligned eyes. Yes, I’ve drawn this hairstyle numerous times before and it isn’t that creative for me but, if it looks good then it looks good.

But then there was the matter of the pose and this was where the painting started to take on its own aesthetic. I could just draw the character standing there but that would look boring, so I drew her leaning on a shovel with one hand. This added a hint of visual storytelling. Was she just doing gardening or was she burying a body? As for her other hand, I’d originally just planned to draw her holding a jar of tadpoles, a “messy” outdoor activity which seemed to fit in with the mood of the original idea. But this seemed boring so I fell back to my usual trick of making the character hold a light source instead.

I decided to go for glowing green slime – it’s easy to paint – and the whole painting just “clicked” for me in that moment. The 1990s! Random 1990s childhood memories of Jill Murphy’s “The Worst Witch” books, 1990s children’s TV shows and/or toy adverts with slime and gunge in them, those weird curved trees in “Doom II” (1994), 1990s-inspired Gloryhammer album covers, this 1993 Formaldehyde Blues Train comedy-horror music video (warning – flicker, comedic gory violence etc…), early 1990s gothic horror fiction by Poppy Z. Brite etc…

Suddenly the whole mood and aesthetic of the painting clicked into place. It coalesced into a single beautifully contradictory mood which could guide me. Witchy, but radioactive. Innocent, but edgy. Gothic, but “cosy”. Old-fashioned, but “Whoa! Radical! To the extreme!“.

Green and purple was the perfect colour scheme for this mood. With hints of blue/pink as well. And dark brown for the trees and a tiny hint of red for the character’s hair scrunchie. Contrasting, complementary colours.

To fill in the space in the background, I decided to add a glowing pink moon to the sky – often I do this sort of thing digitally (there’s a brush in GIMP, the “Chalk 03” brush, which literally looks like a moon…) but I decided to do it traditionally this time. And, after adding shading traditionally, scanning the painting for saturation adjustments, digital airbrush effects/shading etc… it was done.

This process probably varies from artist to artist. But, for me at least, painting from imagination can often be a process of trial and error, of randomness and discovery. Sometimes, there are familiar personal tricks or motifs you can fall back on to help you out with the process (like the theme of “vintage fashion”, like the hairstyle and like “someone holding a glowing object”). You’ll often end up taking inspiration from other stuff but, because you’re just using your imagination, it’ll often be a more creative mixture of inspirations.

Again, painting from imagination isn’t for every artist. It’s difficult, you have to learn or figure out a whole armoury of techniques to deal with uninspired days (because feeling uninspired is more of an issue than if you’re making fan art, painting from life, painting from reference etc…) and you also have to figure out everything yourself – often relying on whatever art theory, mixture of inspirations etc… you have. It’s “hard mode”. But, sometimes, you can actually end up making good art without a single reference image or anything like that and it’s totally worth it 🙂

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Why Painting From Imagination Isn’t An Entirely Bad Idea – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk about painting from imagination today – since, despite getting into fan art last year, I still also paint from imagination pretty much every day. And this was something I ended up thinking about whilst running late one morning in early November last year and making a quick imagination-based painting in a small watercolour sketchbook.

This was a “more for the sake of practice” type painting. I sketched the outline of a face, noticed that it looked like someone looking downwards and decided to experiment with perspective. Originally, it was going to be a painting of a lady in a flowing white dress sitting at a table in a restaurant garden, surrounded by beautiful plants. But I worried that this was too generic, that it didn’t really include enough of my own sensibilities or “style”.

I had already been worrying that I don’t make as much cyberpunk art as I used to, but I wasn’t in the mood for it, so I decided to focus on the “retro” elements of my style and make the lady’s outfit a bit more “mid-2000s” (eg: a crop top and a tiered skirt). For time reasons, I also simplified the original sketch – removing the table, turning the chair into a wooden bench and also adding a random sheet of paper to the lady’s hand (both to add visual storytelling and also to avoid having to draw most of one of her arms).

Still, after inking the line-art with a waterproof ink rollerball pen, it was time to add colour with watercolour pencils and a waterbrush. My original idea, of just using a “realistic” palette – one consisting mostly of peach, white, green, blue and brown – just seemed painfully generic. Yes, it was “timeless” but I’d originally decided to set the painting in the mid-2000s and I wanted this element to stand out more.

So, remembering old Evanescence music videos and the cold lighting used in pretty much every “serious” movie during the first half of the 2000s, I set the painting at night and used cold blue lighting (with a few warm brown highlights for contrast). I also made the character’s outfit dark grey/black as well (and added a gothic necklace). Then, after scanning the painting, I improved it with image editing software (GIMP and an old version of MS Paint). Here’s a full-size preview of the semi-digital painting:

This semi-digital painting will “officially” be posted here next February.

Making art entirely from imagination isn’t easy. In an article a while back, I likened it to “hard mode” in a videogame and mentioned that it’s twice as difficult and results in art that only looks half as good. And this is true. But you should still do it anyway.

Why?

First of all, it builds your art skills by forcing you to use all of them (eg: proportions, perspective, composition, visual storytelling, lighting/shading etc..) and it also builds your imagination as well. Yes, you’ll need to “fuel” your imagination with as many inspirations and influences as you can find, but the real skill is boiling these things down to their most basic elements (eg: themes, techniques, generic features etc…) and then finding new things to do with those elements.

It forces you to learn your own tastes and sensibilities, to learn what YOU personally consider to be “cool” and then work out how to turn this into art. You’ll get to know your own imagination better as well. You’ll daydream more, because this will help you find ideas. Not only does all of this make your art more unique, but it gives it more “personality” and allows you to know more about yourself as well.

And coming up with ideas from imagination is a skill which gets easier when you practice it regularly. Yes, you’ll have uninspired days – and they will hit harder – but even if you end up repeating yourself or making generic art sometimes, this is still practice. And you’ll get better at it over time. To the point where you’ll eventually be confident that – with a blank page and no references – you’ll still be able to paint or draw something.

It also contains even more creative decisions than making fan art or making art from reference does. Yes, both of these things do contain a fair number of creative decisions, but you’ll get more of them if you use your imagination. Creative decisions – as well as focusing on the present moment – are what makes art so satisfying to make.

It’s why, if you’re an artist, you’ll probably got bored fairly quickly if you try out one of those new-fangled “A.I. art” programs. Yes, the result looks cool – but there are very few creative decisions involved, other than writing a couple of sentences, so it just feels “empty” and unsatisfying compared to making art properly.

Finally, and most importantly, painting from imagination is just way more versatile than using references. It might not look as good, but you don’t have to worry about whether you can find the right reference image before you start painting. You aren’t limited by anything that anyone else has made. The only limits are your own knowledge and skills. So, yes, it’s more difficult and doesn’t look as good – but it’s great practice, you’ll get to know your own imagination a lot better, you’ll get to make more creative decisions and it’s also more versatile than using references too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Painting From Life vs. Painting From Imagination

Well, I thought that I’d write another article about making art. In particular, I thought that I’d compare painting from life to painting from imagination since both have some rather interesting advantages.

Of course, there is no “right or wrong” way of making art – some artists will do better with painting from life, others will do better with painting from imagination and many artists will fall somewhere between those two extremes (since, for example, drawing or painting from life can be a good way to learn how to do various things in imaginative paintings). Still, I thought that I’d talk about the advantages of each:

1) Painting from life – realism and inspiration: The two main advantages of painting from life is that it is not only a lot easier to make realistic-looking art but also that you’re a lot less likely to get artist’s block too.

Yes, painting and drawing from life is a skill. But, with a little bit of practice, it can result in art that looks a lot more realistic than you might expect. The main reason for this is that a lot of the “work” has been done for you. You don’t have to worry about where to, for example, place shadows – because you can just look at whatever you are painting and see where the shadows are. To give you an example, here’s a still life painting of mine:

“Tortoise And LED Light” By C. A. Brown

This still life painting is from 2015. For reference, I’d been practicing art every day for about three years before I made this painting – but I mostly painted (and still paint) from imagination… and my imaginative paintings looked nowhere near as realistic as this still life painting did. Here’s an example of what my “ordinary” art looked like back in 2015:

“Upon The Door” By C. A. Brown

The still life painting looks a lot more realistic than this one for the simple reason that I could just see and copy all of the small details. I didn’t have to work out where every crease and every shadow was. Literally all I had to do was to look carefully at the subject and then copy what I saw. So, even if you are relatively inexperienced, you can make some really impressive looking art fairly easily if you focus on painting from life.

Likewise, because painting from life involves painting pre-existing things, you are also a lot less likely to feel uninspired. Literally anything around you can be turned into a painting. Plus, although this is probably considered “cheating” or “heresy” by purists, you can also save a lot of the hassle involved with plein air painting by just painting from photos that you’ve taken.

Although I still make these types of photo-based paintings occasionally, one of the main reasons why I spent about 5-6 months making pretty much nothing but this type of art a year or two ago was because I was too busy to really take the time to think of ideas for paintings – and it allowed me to make dramatic-looking artwork in only a fraction of the time:

“Westbrook Trees” By C. A. Brown

“Langstone Harbour – Riven” By C. A. Brown

So, if you want to make better-looking art more quickly and reliably, then painting from life (or from photos) can really come in handy!

2) Painting from imagination – freedom, skill and individuality: So, why would anyone paint from imagination? Well, there are a lot of really good reasons. The main one is the amount of freedom that it gives you, since you aren’t limited by what exists in real life. For example, take a look at this 1980s-style painting of mine:

“VHS” By C. A. Brown

If I was painting this from real life, I’d not only have to hire someone to pose for the painting, an old video rental shop and a purple light – but I’d also have to somehow perch in the corner of the ceiling for an extended period of time. It would be expensive, impractical and… well… weird. Would it result in a much more realistic-looking painting – with better perspective and lighting? Yes. But it would be next to impossible for me to re-create it in real life. However, since I’m painting from imagination, I can make this painting.

Another great thing about painting from imagination is that it teaches you all sorts of extra skills. For example, you have to learn how things like light and shadow work. You have to learn how perspective works. You have to study lots of everyday objects, to the point where you can re-create them from any angle or perspective “off the top of your head” (it’s a bit like having a library of 3D models inside your brain). You have to learn as much as you can about things like composition and colour theory. And, most of all, you have to learn both how to deal with feeling uninspired and what your own artistic sensibilities (eg: what you think looks “cool” and, more importantly, why it looks cool) are.

It’s a lot more work – and improvement is often a gradual and incremental thing. But it means that you can paint or draw anything. It means that your art will have a lot more uniqueness and personality to it. It also means that, after enough practice, you’ll not only be able to feel confident enough to be able to paint whatever interests you or fires your imagination – but you’ll be able to turn pre-existing inspirations into totally new and original pieces of art that are like your own unique “version” of whatever inspired you.

To give you an example, a day or so before I wrote this article, I found myself fascinated by Youtube videos filmed by people walking around large cities (eg: New York, Tokyo etc…) at night during rainy weather. These videos were relaxing, cool and awe-inspiring. Of course, this feeling was going to result in a painting.

But, of course, I couldn’t just directly copy any individual frames from the videos (because that would be plagiarism). So, instead, I had to learn the “rules” of what made those videos look so dramatic (eg: how light reflects off of wet pavements, how light pollution affects the colour of the sky etc…) by studying them very closely.

Then, after a partially-successful first attempt at making a small digitally-edited painting of a fictional city that used these “rules”, I eventually got it right on the second try. Here’s a “zoomed in” preview of part of the painting:

The full painting should “officially” be posted here on the 7th March 2021 – although it will be somewhat smaller than this “zoomed in” detail.

So, yes, painting from imagination is hard work when compared to painting from life, and the results probably won’t look as good – but you not only have more freedom and individuality, but it also teaches you a lot of extra skills too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂