First, the angst:

I feel frustrated with my project.  The progress feels disjointed.  This process of “cutting and pasting” unrelated images feels uncreative, tedious, and laborious.  What is the connective tissue between the pieces?  I’m having trouble finding subjects to draw.  I’m having trouble finding reference photos.  I’m sick of working from reference photos.  I’m torn between forging forward and finding the connections later, or re-evaluating the premise of the project/focusing it more. I feel removed from my own creativity. I’m anxious and biting off my nails and now my finger nubs hurt. Is that too much information?

Now, the constructive part:

Lauren and I discussed some of these concerns. My creative process prior to thesis was to create these one-off “snapshots” of characters–no background, maybe with a decorative border or something.  There was little experimentation with depth, background, or multiple characters engaging.  Lauren suggested going back to this process of “doing what I like”, but diving deeper into the characters.  How would they look from the front, back, side, sleeping, excited, sad, etc.? What is their backstory? How can that be expanded and mined for inspiration? What happens when the characters Interact? What happened before the image I created.  What happened after? I can cut and paste them later.

Repetition of characters could be one way to create continuity and to build upon the pre-existing work for the project.

My process is to just keep making art. Eventually something will come out. Also, I really just want to draw animals.  I’m going to draw 20ish happy bunnies now.

In the meantime, here are some progress photos. It’s nighttime and the lighting is terrible.  I hope to replace these images with better ones soon.