Figments

I suppose I just love making things up. It's really much more fun to draw something from my head than to portrait something I see. Of course I get this itch whenever I see something so beautiful and inspiring. Having a long and slow vacation to paint some gorgeous landscapes or radiant portraits has always been one of my sweetest day dreams.
But what my deepest desire need to feed on seems to be from figments. I need to draw unseen creatures. I need to paint untouched terrains of unknown world or strange cityscapes. I usually prefer coming up with imaginary people rather than drawing a real life person. It's not like I'm able to draw or paint the imaginary world photo real or anything, and it's not like I want my paintings to be without crisp realism we see in real life. Yet I can't say for sure why I feel so affectionate about keeping everything as fictitious as possible. Maybe the challenges I get in this way tends to give me more rewards. The one thing sure is that I just enjoy painting more this way.

Digital era for Idiotic Workflow

Some people become quite surprised when they get to know my workflow. Though once in my childhood I had proper lessons on how to draw things - at least I hope I did, a lot of times I just ignore the fundamental procedure for a good planned painting. Making a overall composition and founding tones, then going in bit by bit deeper to achieve solid and balanced painting seems to be not for me. Maybe it's because my painting approaches are mostly self taught, but somehow I get really bored really fast when I paint that way.
Frankly, I never work from big picture to gradual details unless the specific work really requires this process. Many times I would just start my painting with one eye and a eyebrow with very vague concept of what I want to draw. If I like what I get from my scribble of an eye, then I just continue on to wherever my mind takes to. Often I wouldn't even know what I am goint to end up with until the very end.
Digital tools work really great for me because of this. I can always move around things afterward, and painting something over and over on top wouldn't leave any scars at the end. I think I miss sometimes the scent of turpentine and the feeling of having real materials I can touch. And there are certain things that you just can't make it with digital tools. But most of the time, the digital tool wins me over with their easy accessibility... and I don't need to clean up later.