These are comps for the next paintings I’m working on (and an older one I already finished). Most of them are currently in what I and many other artists refer to as the “ugly phase.”

The ugly phase is a phase every picture has to go through, it’s the phase right after putting something on the blank canvas (because you need to put something there or you haven’t started) but before any of it is in the right place. The ugly phase is essentially fixing everything after that first stupid move, when you decided to sully that nice pristine canvas with your wretched markings.

Thanks to my new procedure of recording every bit of my process, you can actually watch me go through the ugly phase on some of my own paintings. You might not even notice, it goes by so quickly in timelapse. That’s accurate; the goal is to get through the ugly phase as quickly as possible — because, for the duration that a painting is in the ugly phase, its artist experiences lasting physical pain until it stops looking ugly.

And while the video makes it look easy, what the camera doesn’t show is all the time spent between sessions, not painting, just staring at it, thinking to myself, “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Now what am I supposed to do?”

During this phase, it’s rare that I’ll spend longer than twenty minutes before stopping, setting it aside, coming back to it later, working another twenty minutes on it. I spend a lot less time, but it’s much more staggered, and all of it is agonizing. Compare this with the rendering phase, which is long and boring and monotonous, but easy. At that point, all I have to do is finish it. And when I get to this phase, I’ll often work for hours at a time, and it may take a while, but at least I know what I’m doing.

And that’s the thing about the ugly phase. It actually doesn’t occupy that much painting time. The bulk of the time on a painting is really spent on the rendering needed to take it across the finish line. But while the ugly phase may account for maybe only 10% of the time spent, it easily occupies a good 90% of the anguish.

The ugly phase is what makes starting a new drawing or a painting so difficult. It’s not just the tyranny of the blank canvas, as some say, though the two are related. After all, you had a perfectly good canvas there, it looked fine before you decided to draw on it. Now look, all it took was a single mark, and you’ve ruined it. It’s too late to take it back. You have to live with it now. You can only go forward.

Ruining the canvas was your crime, and now the ugly phase is your punishment.

I spent a lot of time this year trying to figure things out about my art. Along the way, I came across a few books that spoke, if sometimes only indirectly, to the difficulties and confusion and emotional chaos of a struggling artist. These aren’t typical “artist books,” and in fact some aren’t about art at all. They don’t provide any specific advice on how to be an artist. Just meditations on how to feel about it.

For any other insecure artists that may be reading this, I submit to you this short list of required reading.

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
A sprawling ensemble novel about lots of different things, if you want it to be. Some may identify with it as an immigrant story, some as a novel about class tension in America. I identify with it as a story about being young and insecure, and facing the pressures that stop us from doing what we were really meant to do. There are no artists in this novel, but not for lack of art. Whether any of the characters ever decide to do the thing they love isn’t for us to say. But they aren’t alone in their struggles.

Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado
The story of an ex-Hollywood executive turned Vermont-based small business owner and master baker. An inspiring success story of a person doing her own art on her own terms (in this case, the art of delicious cakes and pastries). Along the way, we get accounts of the frustrations of working in Hollywood (always cathartic), and, as an added bonus, each chapter concludes with a recipe for one of the many titular confections.

Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton (audio book version)
Like the previous book, this is also a story of an artist’s rebirth from the ashes of a former life in Hollywood. Unlike the previous book, however, this deals much more viscerally with the painful effect of years of constant failure, and questions of insecurity and self-doubt as the author tries, again and again, to do the thing he loves. It’s one of the most touching and honest books ever written about an artist’s vulnerability. Yes, there’s Star Trek in it, but it’s not a book about Wesley Crusher. It’s about an artist’s personal demons, public failures, and eventual rebirth doing the thing he was probably meant to do all along.

There’s an article up right now on IndieGames.com articulating twenty-four Indie Game Design Dos and Don’ts, which was then picked up at Cartoon Brew as good advice for independent animators.

The two points that Cartoon Brew excerpted (and indeed almost all of the list) speak to something I’ve believed for a long time: the idea that as an indie, you can afford to take more risks because there isn’t $150 million on the line if you fail (unlike if you were doing a big budget film at a studio), and the ability to fail without huge consequences means you have the freedom to do what big studios can’t, so you should take advantage of that.

But I’m surprised no one is talking about this one, even more relevant to animation, in fact much more relevant than it is to video games:

12. Grow up.
Chances are you’re not a fucking kid anymore, so if you feel like making a more adult game, do so. When you’re indie you don’t have to answer to anyone, so stop designing games like you have to have to pass ESRB. I’m not saying everyone should make porn games, but why do all video games seem to have immature themes? People aren’t stupid: stop treating them like they are. Speak through your work like you would to your friends, design for yourself and don’t censor your ideas.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here, but this is always my number one complaint about animated films. The medium can be used to make anything, and yet so often it always comes back to family entertainment or children’s films. This is, of course, this is the safe move. It’s what everyone knows will make money. And I do understand, the studios have a need to make a profit, especially since these movies are not cheap to make, so I don’t begrudge the big studios for making what the market wants.

Independents, on the other hand, aren’t trapped by their price tag the way big studios are. So let’s please use that to our advantage and take some risks, including more animated films in different genres. Let’s please let some of them be sophisticated adult stories like the best of our live action films are. And let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that stories with real people instead of talking mice don’t “take advantage of the medium” and are automatically better suited for live action. Animation, just by being animation, already takes advantage of the medium even before we start to justify its use with things like the twelve principles.

All the best stories being made right now are done in moving photographs. All I’d like is to see them in moving illustrations.

P.S. — I understand, of course, that making a feature-length animated film as an independent is a tall order; in fact, from first-hand experience I know what an incredible undertaking it can be. I know I’m asking a lot, here. And I know there won’t be any flood of feature-length independent animated films, in any genre, coming out anytime soon. But I can still want it anyway, can’t I?

P.P.S. — Two movies from the last few years obviously already did this: Persepolis and Waltz With Bashir. These are incredible films and exactly what the medium needs. However. Let’s diversify a little bit. We don’t want the only alternative to children’s entertainment to be weighty political memoirs.

New painting, a piece of Xenogears fan art, if anyone out there remembers that game.

There’s also a sort of sappy personal story behind this, if you’ll permit me.

This is a special painting for me, because it was the one that got me back into doing traditional painting. I started working on this one about a year ago, at the end of 2008. Now, since then, I’ve actually managed to finish a bunch of other traditional paintings before this one, but before I started this, pretty much all of my work was purely digital. Before this piece, the last time I’d done any traditional painting was 2005.

It didn’t occur to me how much I missed painting until I saw, of all things, a post on Penny Arcade showcasing some paintings that Gabe had started doing. The paintings themselves were pretty great, but he also wrote this in his post:

This latest piece is the first in a series I plan on doing based on my favorite games. I sat down and made a list yesterday of all the games I’ve really loved over the years and I plan on trying to do paintings based on as many of them as I can. The list has stuff like Zelda, Rez, Kingdom Hearts and Bioshock on it, plus lots more.

Strange as it seems, that’s what inspired me. Just the whole idea of painting something fun. Somehow, in the previous three years, I’d been so serious when it came to making art (anyone who’s been through art school maybe knows what I’m talking about) that it didn’t occur to me that I was allowed to have fun.

And so I started this painting. And now a year and five other paintings later, it’s finally finished.

Here’s hoping I can keep it up.

The last several posts are the result of a new system of warm-up exercises, which I shamefully stole from my fellow artist Geoffrey Stone. It’s very simple. First you start with a list. Fill it with all manner of drawing exercises. Assign each one a number, one through however many you have. Then, when it’s time for your warm-up exercise, take your list, look over it very carefully, and roll the dice.

Whatever the dice say, that’s your exercise. Now go do it.

I love this system. For me, the worst part of having lists like these is actually picking one. Making a decision always feels like such an investment, like there are so many choices, I’d better have a good reason for picking this one over the others. Most of the time I end up not doing any of them. But now that’s not a problem. The dice make my decision for me.

My list is below, for anyone who’s curious. (Extra nerdy detail: some of these also have secondary rolls from other lists, and one of them even requires me to roll again from the same list. Yes I do enjoy this a little too much.)

1 – SKETCH OUTDOORS FROM LIFE
2 – NOIR SKETCHES
3 – COSTUME REFERENCE
4 – FIGURE SKETCHES FROM REFERENCE
5 – FIGURE SKETCHES FROM MY HEAD
6 – SELF-PORTRAIT
7 – COLOR SCHEMES
8 – SONG SKETCHES
9 – FAN ART
10 – ARTIST STUDIES
11 – AMBER’S CHOICE
12 – PIXEL ART FREE SKETCH