idanielhaddock

[idanielhaddock]

Life goals.

[idanielhaddock]

Been trying to draw horses...Not so easy.

[idanielhaddock]

A two page assignment I did. It was based on a dream I had that was a borderline religious experience. Trust amazing on a personal level.

I can now see some anatomical mistakes in it...I’m proud of that, that means I’m better now :)

Here’s the time-lapse video of the drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddb8vh-kPhc

[idanielhaddock]

My Muse, My Haunting Ghost.

I’m trying to find the words here that describe how I feel. I guess to speak plainly (or type), is the best option. Having a dream is hard and it’s scary. I’ve been searching for years to find my mountain to conquer and climb to the top of. And I’ve spent more years at the base of it, waiting to ascend. In all that time, to quote William Shatner: “It hasn’t happened yet.” In the last week my art class had an assignment, draw four panels, non sequential but almost all the same, and make each panel with slight differences that will have drastically different tones and therefor, meanings between them. It was interesting and I always am looking for a new challenge and so I was excited to do it, and I did a few small doodles trying to decide what my subject would be. First my mind went to Batman. (It always goes to Batman) But then I settled on something more simple and subtle, just a guy relaxing in a diner.  My teacher explained that two of the panels had to have a positive condensation and the other two had to have a negative one. It was simple, but time consuming, but so much had become easy for me to do in the last three months. I understood how to break down my subjects head, so that it would be well structured, and then I played with his hand till it looked “Right”, and then I took out a brush tool and put dots all around a spot, copied and pasted it and made my very first screen tone for his jacket. I was marveling at how much technical knowledge I had gained in the last few months, and how I was able to apply it so deterministically on my own. For once, I actually felt like a commanding artist, one with my pencil and making my imagination spring free from the bondage of technical restraints. I spent hours until it was done, finished, ready for submittal, but then…I actually “looked” at it for the first time like stranger seeing a new face. I saw it vainly, and I felt alone, empty, so dissatisfied. What I saw was an ugly man, with a kind of big head, that just felt lifeless and dull. Nothing about him grabbed me. Nothing about what I felt while making the page felt anything like what I saw looking at it. All the passion seemed gone and what I saw was just amateur at best. Something no one would stop to take a look at, not at all eye catching, I regretted everything about it, but, I had no more time and had to submit it for class. I hit send and felt so ashamed. I could feel the ghost of my talent haunting me even more so, to the point that I could feel that monster breathing down my neck, asking more of me. Like alone shark i could never pay enough it wanted more, tempting me to do more, do it again, don’t go to bed, it doesn’t matter that it’s 4:00am, get to work! I have a strange relationship with my art, my muse. I want to satisfy it, make it proud, do all the things that flow in my brain endlessly and bring them before the world. But at times, I feel like I am only satisfying an abuser, working and striving to make the monster go away from me, to leave me alone once I have completed every thought that has incessantly been given to me over the years. I’m not kidding or exaggerating when I say that I have weeks where I have a new story idea everyday, sometimes three and four a day. There is no cure for the disease of art, only a slow tedious treatment, work, everyday, then see how far you can push into the night, then when that’s done, before to wake up before your alarm rings and get to work. Release all the pressure build up in your head, or else it’ll explode. I’m not sure if it’s my dream to illustrate and write, or if it’s my dream to satisfy the haunting muse, as I call her.

When I look honestly into myself, there is nothing I would rather do then become an illustrator. And that’s what’s so scary, without this, I don’t know what else there is for me. It isn’t a dream, it’s a trap. If I could, I would give up on it and move on, but its stalks me in the dark and accompanies me in they day. I don’t know what I would do with a life where I didn’t have this to do. I want to quit, I really do, and there have been times in my life where I did, I took the path of least resistance and time and time again it has come back to me. Like Mamimi l in Fooly Cooly, if I don’t draw, then I “over flow”, and I don’t know why.

(When i read this back, I see how conflicted I am at this point in my life. Am I giving into resistance, letting it taint my heart, or am I being haunted by a muse? I don’t know. Oh well.)