Personal Development - Creative Roadblock and Lack of Motivation

It's been a tough few weeks with very little motivation to start making. A lot of fear and stress, over-analysis and anxiety.

[16.10.2013 note: have since realised that I have been suffering from excessive perfectionism as well as declining confidence in abilities in design and decision making. This has been ongoing throughout project. Slowly seeing some improvement during final weeks of semester]

As per Rebecca's awesome advice, I'm trying to just paint whatever for a little while to try to get motivated again.

This started as a photostudy but eventually turned into a fantasy painting. Very, very similar to the stuff I used to paint when I would just paint without a plan. Found myself going back to all the same old images - flying ships, long and rickety wharfs, fantasy houses and dramatic landscapes.


Original photo sourced from here

Original composition, somewhat unbalanced with the foreground grabbing too much attention:

Nautical-themed ship, added an exaggerated bow to the front and gill-like forms to the underside with fish-like tail. Coal-cruise-ship chimneys protruding from a shellfish-like upper shell.

Revised composition - added the tree to the left to keep the eye in the frame, added lighter surf and very loose diagonal lines to the lower cliff (bottom left) to push the eye towards the rocks in lower right, which then push the eye back up towards the ship. Balanced the bulk of the cliff with dark cloud in the distance.

Thoughts: 

• Could clarify and add more diagonal motion to the lower-left cliff.
• Simplify the cliff, make less busy so that it fits in stylistically with the rest of the image, OR increase detail in the rest of the image.
• Horizon a bit unclear in terms of depth - look at references for the clouds next time and ensure that they appear to retain their depth