User:	xella
	Date:	2009-12-19 00:39
	Subject:
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	apathetic
	Music:	Do As Infinity - Enrai (Deep Forest)

I really, really need to stop testing out new media for wow_artxchange. Tougher poses, more foreshortening, more detail, things that force me to stretch my artistic muscle is fine, because I can scrap anything that isn't working early enough into the process that I'm not intensely frustrated when something doesn't work out (unless I keep bashing my head up against it, but even then it's a failure of my artistic skills, not of external issues that I should have still foreseen and controlled.

I've spent the past couple days sketching out my assignment for the month. I bought a new set of inking pens because I didn't feel like dealing with my dip pen/quill/whatever. It was a new brand, but they claimed to be waterproof and had widths between .005 and .7, like my old set of Microns (RIP/MIA, I forget which).

And then I made the same mistake I always do when working on real media exchanges: I didn't think ahead, didn't plan for contingencies, didn't properly test them before diving headlong onto my exchange picture. Just like the best inking job of my goddamned life back in the April exchange—but without the precaution of saving a preliminary scan of the sketch so I could work from that later if I absolutely needed to—I inked my sketch.

And the pens bled. And the .005 turned out to alternately not work at all and lay down a line that's most definitely 1.2 at thinnest. And now I've got an inked (and yes, partially coloured) image that I'm no longer happy with at all because the inks just look that bad. For all I know, my chosen will love it anyway... but I can't do that to them. The exchange is where I've put all my artistic... clout, I suppose is not quite the word I want... but anyway, all my efforts at improving myself artistically have come from the exchange. I simply do not have the energy or attention span to focus them on personal projects for long enough to complete them. Hell, I've been sitting on my bloody WIB project for months, and I've only got one set of the four animations for it "done" and even that isn't done well (and only a second set sticked out). The real worgen dance is going to be released before I have my shitty version done, and then I'll just feel stupid for not having finished it sooner. So I could keep working on this picture, despite my growing resentment of its blotchy inks and smeary base colours. I could finish it and post it, and my chosen might even love it.

But I would know that it wasn't my best work, it wasn't the best I could do even if it was only partially my fault that it was half-assed. And I suspect other people would know too (though would they care?). I'd know that I'd shafted my December '09 chosen, just like I still feel that I shafted my Oct/Nov '08 chosen because all I gave her was a pencil sketch. My very best pencil sketch of a male troll that I could (and six months later, more pencil sketches as I tried once again to wrap my head around male troll facial anatomy), but it was still a pencil sketch and it wasn't even remotely close in quality to anything else I've produced for any other chosen, ever. I know somewhere in my mind that that IS the best I can do for her character, and that too frustrates me.

So even though the round goes until January 10th, I don't know if I'll finish this piece, or start over. If I finish it, I won't be happy because I'll know that it could have looked better, and did look better at one point. If I don't finish it and choose to start over, I'm likely to be tainted with the "the first sketch looked better" syndrome I often find myself in (though technically this would be "the second sketch looked better" because I did sketch the picture once before and it looked better than the one I fucked up, but it's too small to be usable).

Man, I really am a pessimist. At least I know my own mind? :P

	User:	xella
	Date:	2009-12-15 05:55
	Subject:
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	awake
	Music:	Lois McMaster Bujold - 07 Komarr (Unabridged), Part 1 (NoAlbum)

I miss my memory already :( (and for once, I'm not actually talking about my own head, lol)