Quest for Originality

For the next series of paintings, I was on the quest to find originality. What I found was that, originality was elusive. The more I chased after it, the more I was painting the same way, making the same marks that I have always done, painting the same subjects again and again. When I searched for originality and creativity purposefully with intention, I peered over the edge and it seemed that my brain was completely empty.

When I stopped searching, when I decided "not to care," originality came to me. Maybe, originality can only be present if it is unplanned and spontaneous, when parts of your critical attention is turned off. It seemed like such a simple concept so I decided to try it. What I found is that although you cannot force originality, you can do certain things in your everyday life to encourage more moments of spontaneity and clarity. You can create a space and simulate processes that will give you a higher percentage of finding originality.

The formula for originality

Decide not to care. I'm not talking about not caring about your art of your painting, but not caring about how it will turn out, or how it will be received, how you should be painting. If we went to a formal art school, there were certain ways in which we were taught how to paint or approach the canvas. Or even if we were self-taught, there was a pattern which worked for you and you kept doing. I'm telling you to forget the rules.

1. Feed your artist spirit with new experiences - when we are focused on our craft, making a painting, or writing a novel, we are reaching into the countless of brain connections we have made in the past. We reach towards that one color we saw on the cover of national geographic, or the phrasing we've read by our favorite authors, etc. We have these bus routes/train tracks in our brains and if we're limited on how many images we filed away, we'll make the same connections again and again. We'll paint the same kind of tree again and again, because that's the one we know. That's the one that becomes comfortable. But what if you added an 3-inch thick encyclopedia of different types of trees, from the tropics of Indonesia to the Black Forest in Europe? You'll now have built a more interesting array to pull images from. And what if, on top of that, you decided to add an encyclopedia of insects? You now can paint insect-like trees. When feeding your inner artists, make sure to pull from both categories of things that interest you, that you are comfortable with, as well as subjects you know nothing about and what terrifies you.


2. Distract your brain - if our brains are making the same connections again and again. Painting and writing the same things, you need to turn off that part of your brain. Listen to music and paint to the harmony. Write you dialogue script as if it were a baking recipe. Doodle without intention - just let the pen drift in all sorts of direction without reigning them in. Find activities in which you tune out. I get some of my best ideas when I am having tea break, when I'm jogging, or in the shower. Because during those activities, I am not completely focused on art, I am just living.

3. The opposite to the above, pay attention ,very close attention to the minute and mundane - eavesdrop on that boring conversation on the bus, trace the cracks on the sidewalk with your footsteps, notice that speckled texture on your ice cream, or the swirly pattern in your coffee cup. These all can be part of some new alien landscape.

Japanese architecture can become a mechanical jellyfish.

4. Changing your muscle memory - our brains are connected to our hands, even when we doodle, we tend to create the same shapes and patterns without knowing. We've ingrained them to our muscle memory. To change it, or train your muscles to do things differently, you've got to give it a handicap. Doodle with the opposite hand. If you're a right hander, draw with your left. Tie your fingers together so you can only use two. Use a brush the size of your broom. You'll definitely make marks you've never done before.

I was able to "find" this robot by making random marks with my left hand on paper first.

Now, when you look down at what you've drawn, you'll probably find marks that makes little sense or shapes that look "childish or foreign" because you've never drawn this way before. To make sense of it all. To finally rope in originality, we've got to turn your usual brain back on. We'll need that pattern-finding, sensible, methodical you to make sense of all this randomness. You've got to find the pattern within the chaos.

Originality can't always be summoned by our will. It is often "process-depedent," so in order to find it you'll have to keep reinventing your creative process.

Interview with Seal!

Monkey here:

Seal recently got interviewed by Northern Forcus, a Norcal-art blog run by Shannon Dutra that also interviewed me a while back. While the interview online here is pretty great, the 6-page full interview by Seal is really, really amazing.

Granted, I live with Seal, and we create next to each other, and have long discussions about art and live and tons of stuff, so I might be biased, but damn, that was a good interview. You have to download the full version (since it's so long), but really, if you're interested in who Eve is, both as a person and an artist, you can get a pretty large glimpse into why she creates, the incredible hurdles she has overcome, and her wide breadth of inspiration.

So enough reading here, go go go over to Northern Focus now!

Live painting!

Friday night, Monkey and Seal boarded the bus at 9pm with their easel, table, and acrylic paints for Hyphen Magazine's live painting at 111 Minna, SF.

With live painting and any engaging creative act, it is a constant feedback between the artist and its surrounding. There is often a lot of pressure to make something "amazing" in a couple of minutes. I don't know how many of the guests stayed for the entire night to see its progress, but the earlier guests only saw a blank canvas and some incoherent squiggle marks. Some audience members also approached with, "what the hell is that?" "where are you going with this?" And often, the artist themselves are unsure.

When good music came on, the paint and canvas connected. There were a couple of moments of crippling self-doubts, and I had to reign myself in and trust the movement and life of the art to come through.

Not quite what I had envisioned, but after 2 hours, this is what Seal came up with. Not too bad for the first live painting ever. Monkey was so supportive and Seal had so much fun. She is looking forward to the next one!

Stop by to see Seal Paint!

Hi all! Don't forget that you can see Seal in action once again doing a live painting show with the ever talented Lawrence Yang at Hyphen's Issue 19 release party: the Blaze of Glory! Monkey will also be on hand selling Seal's prints and his ties, so be sure to check it out!

The show is at 111 Minna, and starts at 9pm. Seal should start painting around 9:30-10pm. Cover is $10, but if you pay $20, you also get a 1 year subscription! Cool beans! You can check out Hyphen's FB event page for more info.

Process Post: Skyace Wasteland and Thank you Plus Secret Event

Thank you everyone for supporting us at the Center for the Book's Holiday Craft Fair. It was cold and rainy, but still a fair good showing. Monkey sold some ties and met some awesome people while Seal was madly working on some tight deadlines for the painting below.

MonkeyandSeal are cooking up a soon-to-be announced secret event so please be on the lookout and keep your March open! Thank you.

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Seal's Process: Part II of the Tyger Tyger paintings

This illustration was painted in acrylics. I had in mind an old rundown power plant wasteland with a wooden railroad going through the mountain passage. I wanted to get the feel of "after a rain" so I tried to paint cool lighting without any direct sunshine. Below is the in-progress step-by-step painting process.


The relatively finished piece above. The thumbnail below. In the thumbnail, I mainly wanted to design the shapes and rhythm of the piece before any details. The plane wings point downward, with the vertical power plant columns on the right holding the main mass of the painting, and the railroad points upwards back towards the plane.
So below is my initial setup. I have my thumbnail on the corner of my in progress painting. A book of clouds above so I can reference color and shape. Each different storm cloud have different shapes. I still struggle with painting clouds, but they're fun.
I generally try to paint from background to foreground, meaning sky, ground, then whatever is in front. I do the biggest shapes first, the plane being the smallest is last. Although I broke my own rule by painting the hazmat sign first before the shape on the left. It was just too tempting. I like how old signs have rust color and peeling paint job. I actually lost the original shape of the mountain behind the powerplant. Something I am still trying to fix. Thank you for visiting!