Tuesday 28 February 2012

The Limits of the Imagination

This morning I woke up, climbed out of bed, checked on the little one and then popped into the bathroom to freshen up ready for the day ahead.

To most people this is probably a really usual start to a usual day. That was sadly not the case for me, oh no.

When I got into the bathroom I looked into the mirror and was met by something very unsettling. It appears that the morning prior, when I had trimmed my beard, I appear to have shaved off a massive chunk from the beard itself straight down to the skin and had spent all day walking around with a completely stupid and mis balanced beard!

This would have been fine if not for 1 major factor: I don't remember doing it!

Now I do have a history of sleep walking and all manner of other REM Sleep Disorder activities, and so I wouldn't be surprised if I did in fact sleep-shave!

Anyway, this wouldn't do, and so I spent the next 5mins trying my best to make the other side of my face match this side so I can grow the beard back out. I'm not happy with the results, it's not what I want for a beard, but it looks better than it did, and so for now until it grows back it will just have to do.

"What does this have to do with your blog!?!" I hear you cry! Well let me tell you:

About 3-4 weeks ago I was finishing off my Dreamer crew, this included Coppellious. The paint scheme I was going for was a slimy green skin with white hair and a dark purple jacket.

It should have been pretty easy, nothing adventurous, but for some reason I just couldn't get the skin tones right.

Eventually I gave in and gave him regular flesh colours and it worked infinitely better:


Am I happy with this paint scheme? No I'm not! But it's better than what it looked before hand.

This got me thinking, why did I let it get so bad in the first place? It wasn't my painting ability, I can paint better than that every day of the week, and twice on Wednesdays!

No the reason was because the painting scheme was uninspired, it was a bland choice instead of an inspiration from my imagination. For some reason that I can not explain, whenever I tried to imagine Coppellious and what he would look like, I always drew a blank.

And here my friends is where I really started to worry:

You see, it's one thing to have your paint jobs limited by your own talent, I deal with that every time I pick up a brush, and it can be overcome with practice, tutorials and more practice. But how are you supposed to overcome your limitations, when it's your own imagination that is holding you back?

So far the only problem I've had this with us Coppellious, and who knows, maybe I just struggle to imagine a squid faced German boogy man, but in about a months time I'll be picking up some more models, and in the back of my mind I can see ol' squid face laughing in anticipation.

I guess we'll have to wait and see...


- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

1 comment:

  1. I feel your pain, strangely I had exactly the same problem with the same model. My copellius ended up getting a red wash over his skin tone which was originally going to be a diseased greeny/yellow off colour (think liver failure). But I ended up going to a raw, skin flayed off the flesh look because what I wanted just wouldn't work/fit with the model.

    The next figure I've had the problem with is my guild guards, I know what scheme I want but every time I pick one up I get bored, put it down and go work on something else. So clearly something isn't right.

    My only solution is variety. Eventually I'll get round to the model when I'm in the right mood for it and it'll fly off the brush in a really quick time and I'll probably end up doing both of them in a fraction of the time I'd expect!

    ReplyDelete