AwkwardInk

So I have become slightly obsessed with flickr.com
I have set up an account and posted some illustrations. It is really bizarre how nice it is to get feedback from people and know that other people are looking at them. I'm feeling quite motivated to create and quite inspired by what other people have put up on their flickr sites as well.

You can find my stuff at http://www.flickr.com/photos/midemkiw/
Here are some of my faves.

How do you create a picture book? by SHAUN TAN

"With a blank piece of paper in front of me, my imagination is not especially fired up. I could start drawing, but everything would end up looking the same - and most likely stuff I’ve done before. So I actively look to absorb foreign ideas and influences, which is one key lesson learned from years of illustrating different SF stories. Good ideas don’t just turn up, you have to go looking for them.

Research - reading, looking at pictures, playing with different media - provides freedom from the creative paralysis that comes with infinite possibility. I need specific points of reference to develop ideas, and also a kind of resistance to my own stylistic ‘default settings’ so that I think outside the usual circles, and actually learn something new.

Painting and drawing for me is not about creation but about transformation. It's not so much about expressing preconceived themes or a mastered delivery of statements but rather a process of slightly absent-minded discovery, of seeing where certain lines of thinking take you if you keep following them. I know I'm on the right track when there is a sense of unfamiliarity about what I'm doing, that I'm actually being surprised by the way mixed drawings and words make their own novel sense, and I can coax them into surrendering whatever meaning is there through repeated drawings."