“Welcome to the Wilderness” is a blog publication documenting my comic project, Annex:Anima. This is a collection of thoughts and progress reports.
I’m really evaluating my creative process here. It’s new. It’s complicated. It’s not what I was expecting. It’s not how I remember my creative process to be…
Can I share a thought with you? I would much prefer to write about this particular thought here than tell someone about it in person. I think I know what it means, but therein lies the issue.
So… I have this…. vision. Rather, a “moving image”, or simply a visualized “idea”. It comes and goes, but it pops into my head most frequently when I know I’m losing touch with this project and need an injection of reassurance.
Here is this “vision”, to the best of my ability to tell it:
Sitting at a desk is a cartoony-ish version of myself. The background seems unimportant, as it’s not clearly defined in this “vision”. I think I’m wearing headphones. In front of me is a blank sheet of paper. I’m holding a pencil just above the paper, but it hasn’t yet made contact. There is a very short delay. I take a breath. Then all at once I drop the lead of the pencil to the paper and begin to create. The moment this happens, I hear music begin to play. I think it’s music? It’s so brief. It sounds more like a long note plucked on a sitar and left to make an extended hum. I see ribbons of color coming from the paper. They swirl about like a paisley design. My eyes are closed. The ribbons continue to flow out as I draw.
Cast your judgment aside for a moment; I am aware that this is a naïve and rather masturbatory image. It is bloated with blind faith and moronic over-confidence. So why do I continue to welcome this “vision” when it arrives unannounced?
Here’s my point about bringing this up: I am willing to bet all of my money and the shirt on my back that I am not alone in possessing this “vision”. Granted, it may come to others with different imagery, but the idea is the same. I know what this vision is trying to tell me. I’d imagine you can figure it out too if you happen to be a creative spirit on a journey like myself.
Ever since I graduated from my first college experience and set out into the world, I have been continually adjusting my expectations of nearly everything in my life. Anything from how people around me behave in any number of circumstances, to the simple likelihood that a meal I make from scratch without a recipe will taste good. In conclusion: not much really surprises me anymore and “reality” unfolds exclusively in the present-tense.
My standards for my own work have dramatically increased as I became more aware of how rapidly I can improve. This has been a BIG problem. I’ve held-off on starting the paneling process of Annex:Anima for a very long time, because the act of comparing a free-time drawing that I made a week before to one I made yesterday is an exercise in self-sabotage: why start now when I CLEARLY have so much room to continue to improve? It’s insanity and I need to conquer it ASAP.
The “vision” I outlined above is so irritating because my subconscious is at war. I know there are two parts to this and I don’t really care which is the one that will persevere in the end. My first interpretation is that my subconscious is trying to tell me “when you begin to do the real work it will feel blissful and restorative”, but I cannot shake the naïve imagery of the vision, which I think is the trap. The other part of the vision, this one I loathe to subscribe to, is the idea that “when you begin the real work it will flow forth from you with ease and you will create freely, undistracted, unassailably”.
FOOLISH!
BUT, the most annoying part: I PREFER THE SECOND INTERPRETATION!!!
I wish that this project would just flow from me! I wish I could make a drawing without interrogating every aspect of the pose, emotion, clothing article, slight twisting of the wrist, “how many eyelashes is too many?”, etc.! I think this is the part that I feel other creatives can relate to, and why I’m not alone in this “vision”.
I wish this came easy to me, but it wont.
But that’s GOOD, because it’s HARD and it SHOULD BE.
I don’t know for sure when this project will really “begin”, so to speak. It is so cosmic. I definitely have so many distractions. Most are self-inflicted. I cannot seem to justify the time I spend on this, despite my desire to create it. I continue to adjust my expectations and hope I can just DO IT, knowing that I HAVE TO DO IT. I really do feel like my life depends on it, to some degree.
My partner, among a plethora of other sources, tells me that I need to forget about making something perfect. It’s solid advice! I understand this! I don’t even see “perfection” as something even in the galaxy of what I want to accomplish. I just want to make something I’m proud of, but looking over work I’ve made in the past, even just months ago, I feel strangely discomforted by the pride I felt when it was first created. It matters little to me if this becomes a “big deal hugely acclaimed thing”. What worries me is the potential, via patterns I notice in myself, that I am working on something I am destined to hate.
I know I can’t be bogged down by that. I just hope my vision has at least a fragment of reality to it.
❤ Casey
Instagram: neverlost.art
