some of you - the readers of Massive Voodoo - might know that MV started as a kind of diary for me. About work, about life and everything else. Posts with the label "Kong Fu" is where I find space to speak about personal stuff that is on my mind, heart and soul. It's been a while since the last serious Kong Fu and it helped me in the past to get rid of things that occoupied my mind. I think it is time to speak up now. I was wandering in the dark long enough and I feel the light telling me slowly the way to a better direction. That is why I'll write that Kong Fu.
Why? Let's find out.
Important:
These thoughts are just mine, Roman's. They are very personal. Don't joke on them.
No other MV member is speaking with these words right here. Just me. THIS is definatly too long to read and I am not sure if anyone will do until the end. There is no summary in the end as you have to find reason for yourself to read it and maybe find your own summary in the end.
Something is fighting inside me since a little while.
Small annoying demons without a face pulling on my beard and bringing mind pain since a little while. I am exhausted. Why? Because I had a great and creative miniature painting year 2014.
Because I wrote so many blogposts in 2014 concerning the great success of last years "MV's year of the painter", other blogposts, 5th year celebration of Massive Voodoo and many more things concerning the blog, had great painting classes with great students in 2014. Somehow 2014 felt like a year with many goals achieved, earned because of hard work. Day by day, but I also learned to find more space for myself, for my free time. I even lost weight by a diet and discipline and training. I am not able to travel to every contest outthere, I did go to to some and enjoyed them and learned to spent my free weekends away from my miniature work. 2014 felt like riding the waves.
2014 was a great year, but 2015 started somehow totally different. Why?
After the Monte San Savino Show 2014 I felt that my power is not endless. In retroperspective I was at a turning point after the show. My creative energies were emptied. I felt like a wanderer in a desert with no flowers there. I still put the rare energies I could find into bringing daily updates to the jungle blog, finishing the year of the painter with grace and painting some models, doing a cool class in the netherlands with great students, but my way of painting changed. Why?
I missed the flow I have during the projects I love to paint. Miniature painting is my daily work, but last year it did not feel like work. I was so enthusastic, powerful and strong and everything felt easy and great. Best work I ever had, but 2015 did not let me start my engine properly. 2014 was like working with colours without thinking about how to apply this or that colour or how to achieve the perfect blending while painting a miniature project. I had some nice blendings - simply a colour transition from A to Z - here and there, but never focused on achiving them. I just did paint.
Blending. This word is making miniature painters sick from the inside all around the globe. If you do not achieve a proper blending your miniatures are not worthy - somehow this crawled in my mind and I tried to paint clean and sober in the end of 2014. I had no fun at all. I felt like I lost my spirit.
Then Christmas time arrived and I said to myself: "Roman, you just need some time off from work! Why not do some holidays until new year!" Yeah, great idea, but I fell into a deep hole and for the first time ever in my life I am able to say I felt the meaning of the word "depression". I had no idea what was happening to me. I know about my ups and downs from the past, but a little rest and looking inside myself always helped me to get up again after some time of battery recharging.
But this time was different: I was scared of life, future, the actual moment, losing my comfort zone, which I actually did not have during these days. I felt really bad and had no idea why. After some talks with friends I got the tip out of my family to check my Vitamin D3 level at a doctor. This could be a reason for feeling so unable to handle fear or problems I was facing. So I did. Why? Because it just felt good to have any idea to a solution on what is going on.
Doctor's blood check brought the result. My Vitamin D3 level was so ridicilous low. I took my medicine and felt better straight away. Able to handle problems, get a grip on things I wanted to know and wanted to change. So far, so good. To those of you who do not know about Vitamin D3: It is a Vitamin you gain mainly from being in the sun and somehow I forgot about that in the second half of 2014. It ain't all about Vitamin D3, do not get me wrong here, but pushing that level up helped me to get back on track at least during daily life and helped me to work on other issues.
Ok, having solved some issues for myself meanwhile I was still struggling to find my creativity back and still am. Where has my muse gone? I am interested in finding some new music for myself but do nothing for it. Inside something is screaming for a change, but there is no direction available, at least that is how it seems. I am not interested in miniature news at all. Way too many miniatures on the market and my drawers are still packed with stuff I once thought to be interested in painting them up. No I am not. Not right now. Instead of riding the waves I felt like dying on my surfboard surrounded by sharks and well I gained weight again because of the lack of healthy discipline in the final months of 2014.
Time to find myself again, eh?
Time to look inside myself and find out what I am struggling with. Why I do not feel the creative freedom I seek?
Facebook is making me ill or mad or whatever you might call that. No offence at all. I mean on the one hand the quick connection to all your friends and fellow painters on facebook is great, but on the other hand it takes way too much time to see it all if you have over 1700+ facebook friends. I can not handle it. When I open up facebook for me it feels like somebody is pressing the toilet flush and holding the button. Way too much information rushing by. Hard to get a hold on something and if you want to check back with something you saw a moment before you get lost in the simple size of it. I am not able to answer all my facebook mails anymore. I try to tell everybody that they should contact me via mail as I am much more precise and accourate there. Facebook. I open it up to link a blogpost of MV to it, then I check other people's updates and flush ... my mind is occoupied with that idea, this colour scheme, that cool project, that advertisment, this super-sale, this great information, this blabla here, this comment there, this thumbs up, this wtf and more and more and more and more. Just too much. I think even if my brain says "No, do not take this information in too deep" I am a person who takes stuff I see during my trip in the facebook-world longer as expected inside myself, without knowing it. It distracts me subconsciously. I am feeling bad if I am not able to respond like others or thumb up here and there. Subconsciously it is there and it is driving me mad. I have to put in some distance between the health of my soul/brain and facebook. Still, no offence to anyone. I mean, some might understand what I mean with my talk about facebook, because they feel the same. This might be a reason I can work on. Doing less facebook or using it with more discipline, more focus. Deja vú.
Expectations others might have on me after this beautiful year of 2014, with so many output on the Massive Voodoo blog, with so many miniatures painted. It feels I am not able to live up to these expectations if I am always confronted by them. Expectations I put on myself because I think others have them on me. About quality, about style, about colour, about much more. I have to get rid of that.
Well, I wasn't able to spent much time in the studio with painting miniatures. If the muse is just not there every colour turns grey and the time in the studio I felt my heart aching. Why? I have no idea. So I spent some time at home. Working on Emails, writing on a book, solving issues, pushing other things forward, but not my painting. When I was painting I was painting like a robot. I mean for me it is like riding a bycicle. Painting everyday since several years leads you to that point, but I felt like a robot, my soul was not there. I was unhappy with every brushstroke I've done. Not that anyone else could see that, but I could. There was no soul in it. Just a robot. My brushes went dry. Sharks ate my muse and pooped her out all over the oceans. She seemed lost.
My painting felt empty for me in those months. My main focus seemed to be on trying to achieve nice blendings and I was losing the way I used to paint. The fun in throwing colours on a canvas.
Then we had the very cool painting class with Alfonso Giraldes. A fellow painter who told me once again what painting truely means. Having fun. Not about thinking too much in terms of quality of a paintjob, as every paintjob done with joy, heart and fun will turn out beautiful. My eyes start to see the beauty of every day colours again. I can not express how thankful I am to him to tell this truth to me while I was wandering in the dark.
Well, where does all this talk lead me?
I have no idea. What I know is that I have to paint to find my direction. That is why I am more often in the studio, at my painting table with brush in hand. To find my soul again. Eliminating the high pressure I put on myself by the high expections others might wait for from my side. Failing. Painting. Learning. Having fun. Enjoy. I am on this road and I start to enjoy it once again.
One thing I feel at the moment is that I am not able to do many photos for articles on the blog to explain something I do as I do not know myself. I studying my painting for myself and I can not tell you what I do. Just an example: I tried to take a photo of how I start with this particular skintone:
Well, easy job, eh? Usually I would start to tell you: I did start with painting the shadows of the skin with the colour A, then used the colour B in that mix and then went for the highlights to achieve blabla... well, this first photo was the only photo I took because I was painting without thinking. I just did and the result was just a self study for me and used for some mad progress explanations during a private coaching to mainly explain that there is nothing you can do wrong when you paint. I hope you learned that lesson, Jens? :D
The result looked like this and I had no expextations on quality or blendings or whatsoever. I just wanted to paint and enjoyed it, but I have no idea on how to find the energies nor the right words to explain the readers of MV - you - what I exactly did there:
I was just painting and it felt good. I wasn't painting like that since a while and I am out of training I'd say because of the lack of painting in the past months. Training on how to move the brush, training to feel the right colour to use here and there and so on.
I am just painting at the moment. Throwing the colour that I want to the place I want it to be. This is rough work and I like my rough work more at the moment instead of millions of minutes invested in a clean blended area. Another Roman bust and well, I can not read any Ancient Roman history novels anymore. I am feed up by them. I read so many in 2014 and it was fine, but I am totally going away from reading historical novels at the moment. Finding different books, unusual books with topics I never did read before is what I am seeking at the moment. I need a change and that change needs is conquering its space.
I also work on two comissions at the moment. One restauration of a broken figure and the other goal I have is to finish the project of the "Chimera". This is a WIP photo, before I worked on it in front of Alfonso's class. Before the colour storm and right now it looks cool for me but I am looking forward to throw some more colours on that base.
So, really now Roman - where does this blabla lead to?
I am finding my way back to painting and I am confused. I stop keep trying to fullfil expectations I expect others have of me. I am not able to repeat the year of the painter that 2014 has been. I am not able to write so many articles right now. I have to write less on the blog at the moment as I am in urgent need to find myself in my painting or I am going mad and therefore I have to paddle on my surfboard to find my wave to surf on. I have to panic those sharks to get rid of them and collect all that swimming poo. Maybe I can combine the last two.
Happy Painting to you all!
Roman
