Skyward by Brandon Sanderson

Welcome to the wonderful world of creative frustration.

How to describe the process of making this piece of art? There were a lot of personal blocks that slowed me down and prodded at that petty dragon, Imposter Syndrome, who hybernates in the deepest part of my brain.

The main problem I had was that I loved the book so much.

SKYWARD

Skyward, a sci-fi fantasy with space battles, a prison planet, mysterious evil beings, and a deadly mental defect that causes cowardice.

Not to mention a strong (strong as in, well-written) female protagonist,who is flawed enough to be relatable, yet spirited enough to be inspiring. Team that fact with side characters who are given the time to flourish and be essential in the plotline and you have the makings of a fundamentally great cast.

Did I mention there's artificial intelligence that you get emotionally attached to? AND the whisper of super-powers that liken to a distant cousin of The Force?

I don't want to get into too much detail because *spoilers*, but you can kind of get an idea of what type of a novel this is.

It certainly activated specific visuals in my brain as I was reading it (actually, I listened to it on Audible- it was...A FANTASTIC production). This made me believe that it would make it easy for me to create a 'book cover' type drawing, but actually, it just raised my expectations above and beyond the level of my skill.

THE ART PROCESS

There were at least 2 periods in the time it took to draw this piece where I had a week-long break away from it, I found myself not wanting to look at it because it discouraged me so much.

The first time I vaulted over the block was when my sister suggested that I changed the style of the drawing. I initially had wanted to draw it in the style of those space race posters made by the Soviet Union back in the day, but had sidled into a more comfortable sketchy style that I was used to.

You can see my Pin board that I used for gathering inspo for this composition here.

I did suck it up and take a few steps back to change the style and the result of that absolutely boosted my confidence.

The second block came when I started on the background. I worked and worked at it, but the whole composition seemed to lose balance. I knew the elements I definitely wanted in place - floating debris in the air, a spaceship boosting towards the sky....AND evil white eyes that were watching AND a glimpse of a starry sky. 

It became a bit too much. When I looked at the picture my eyes didn't know what to focus on, so eventually, I scrapped a few of the ideas and went for a simpler approach.

This included the scrapping of the Starry Text, which I actually REALLY loved and was loathe to remove, but it JUST wasn't working.

The breakthrough for this block came when I added the dark cave effect to frame the whole image. Suddenly there was depth and a scene that was believable - I could breathe a sigh of relief, the end was in sight.

The finishing off the piece was so enjoyable. The end result makes me want to push myself even more.

Somehow, it's so much more satisfying to have struggled through something and emerged stronger, than to have given up and finished at a mediocre level.

There were times during this process where I could have said, "This is it, it's not what I want, but it's okay." and finished there. However, (this time) I didn't allow myself to stop until I was completely happy with how it looked - even if that meant I took 2136721836812 times longer to complete it than expected.

It's certainly not a perfect piece of art, but it did raise the bar. And that's what every artist wants from their work, a chance to raise the bar. 

Until Next time,

Minnie