I was contributing to a forum thread about “creative process” and writing about how I usually come up with image ideas. It occurred to me to post that here.

Some visual workers seem to get their ideas in a series, where one image leads directly to the next.

My images, even those that fit in a series don’t ”evolve” like that. So, these workers have a creative process which is emerging from inside their image series to then drive new work to become part of that series. My images are more like an “assignment” or “challenge” I give myself from outside my previous work. Maybe I like to organize my ideas as “projects’ in response to an “assignment” because of my experiences at school and in engineering disciplines.

One way I generate or organize my ideas about science fiction image with figures in them is by a loose science fiction scenario I invented about 2 sisters who are raised on Earth, but end up on a long voyage together to start a homestead on a distant colony world. 

Here’s an example
With me, an art piece starts with both intellectual and visual ideas/urges. I had this idea/urge for an image based on the idea of “Taking your kids to your workplace”. At the same time, I was thinking of that visual/cultural icon or archetype of a visitor and a prisoner at a jail visitor’s room – holding their hands up together on each side of a glass partition in greeting. And I was also entertaining this visual idea/urge about that fresco on the Cistine Chapel ceiling of the hand of God (but with the 2 bodies in a more idealized, flowing “S” shape in my mind). {See, Art History does pay off!}

So I had these 3 ideas/urges swimming around in my head and started applying my “Colony Sisters” organizing principle to them, to see what would pop up in my mind. What I came up with was the idea that one of the sisters would be part of a space station crew and the other sister would be visiting her from Earth. To get the “S” shaped composition of 2 bodies, I imagined that they would be in null gravity and I could therefore arrange their bodies pretty much however I wanted. To get the hands through glass gesture, I imagined that the visit was a surprise and therefore the crew member sister happened to be on EVA (“space walking”) and they would communicate through a porthole.

Those thoughts, and applying the “Colony Sister” framework to them, crystallized the project to a visually composable level, so I made a couple of pencil sketches and started the 3D modeling. Below is the result:

Art Identity

Luckily for us all, you couldn’t loose your art identity if you tried. But you still have to find it – a well engineered game for sure.

Personally I look at it something like this:
Picture a magnifying glass outdoors on a sunny day. At one end is the sun. Much closer is the magnifying lens. It can focus the sunlight down to a very nearby burning spot.

The sun represents the cosmos. The lens represents your art. That burning point is your soul/spirit/{whatever the proper word}. The thing which the lens is focused onto is your unique personal artistic vision.

Now for the fun part: Just as the lens focuses the sun into you in one direction – it also focuses your soul outward to the sun in the other direction.

Where does your art come from as you mature? It wells up from a kind of spring you get to dig into yourself. When you start, your little trickle of art spirit is very near the surface and the cares of the world rain down and fill it with ego mud. This is a tricky time, because no one has an easier time fooling us than we ourselves do. Your ego could fool you about who you are and what you’re capable of doing.

So you keep on digging, a constant and imperfect practice, over and over – sometimes you fall back a bit, but not to worry, over the long haul you make good progress. That’s in the nature of practice and it’s human nature. Therefore, you get deeper and the flow gets cleaner and purer and eventually your authentic unique nature flows out into your work. Of course it’s not all internal. As you practice and your work gets purer, it will communicate better to others, as well as to you.

You won’t ever be finished, it’s a process, not an event. And yes, it’s a spiritual journey – one of many versions of the hero’s quest.

      _jim coe