From Grief to Art: Using Suffering to Create Characters/Stories (Soulmates Video + PSD)

Hey everyone!

My goal as an artist is not just to make pretty pictures. Yes, it's one of the things I love since I'm very into visual stuff, but beyond that, I believe one of the most interesting opportunities we have as artists is to portray our human experience. Being "original" is not about being eccentric, colorful, or extroverted, it's about thinking for yourself, being aware of your surroundings, and making an interpretation of that. We share so many things but every experience is unique, it only takes to pay a little attention to who you are and use that, that is what I consider being original.

So, I'll describe the conceptual process behind my last piece "Soulmates" and how eventually I attached a little bit about me into this piece (story and characters).

In principle, I thought it would be nice to use the wolf reference pic for a "couple" idea. At first sight, the character representing the black wolf was clear for me that would be mysterious, obscure, and dangerous, but for some way, I thought the character representing the yellow wolf would not be just the opposite but also a more absorbing/controlling character (like the wolf in the pic), empowering the idea "I own you/this is mine" type, and that's why the hands of the character that represent the yellow wolf are drawn that way, a hand lock and the other right at the neck, not in dominance but more like you are mine.

In the reference, my initial thought was to attach a "female" gender to the yellow wolf that was claiming this "male" black wolf, of course, I don't know the gender of each for a fact or even if that was the case but the reasoning into my logic was the gesture of each, the straight and stoic posture of the black wolf gives me an alpha male suggestion and the curved posture of the yellow/grey wolf generally associated with the female anatomy. Also, the gesture of the yellow wolf suggests affection towards the black wolf, in my experience, I found women more comfortable sharing their emotions than we men, justifying more this gender distribution.

My goal was to transmit that same perception without touching the "toxic relation" ground and more like the "love/caring" ground mixed with a bit badass vibe using expressions, fashion, and details.

What you need to take from these subjective assumptions is that they speak about personal experiences, this idea could fit also in a totally different concept like a mother/son situation or maybe two female wolves, but what's important to always notice is that the idea should resonate with you at some degree. That's what makes the piece feel "real" and relatable.

But during the process while working on the black wolf character, I was having the yellow wolf character shape layer in white, no colors, and no values. And I kind of liked it so much that way that I was thinking about how to keep her very simple and white so the ghost idea just popped into my mind. I thought it would be nice to push this kind of visual contrast by suggesting she was a ghost and he was in duel. There you go, that's how my random ideas pop up sometimes, what Bob Ross would call a "happy accident".

A reasoning behind these thoughts is because for the past days I've been remembering my grandfather who died in a very tragic way a few years ago, and being in that kind of state, set the environment for tragic ideas to manifest without me even noticing. Since we cannot take care of the ones who are gone we can only miss them, but also, using that suffering to make something others can relate to is an interesting way to create something authentic.

It's interesting because after defining that concept direction, now suddenly I was more interested in knowing what was the back story of these two, how did she die? is he going for revenge? did he kill her accidentally? did they meet during that lifetime or was she even a human?

So many interesting questions in my opinion that hold such a range of ideas to attach to the character design, character development or illustration. This is what I constantly struggle with when creating new interesting concepts. How to come up with ideas I like, because although I've developed a system of points to address in the backstory of my characters, often the process feels unauthentic and systematic, not real, not interesting enough, and I end up spending days until I spot the right sparkle that gives meaning to my characters. So I love when some ideas are the ones that come by accident. Inspiration usually finds us in unexpected places.

My suggestion for you that might be struggling a bit with character design is to start with a simple idea, and maybe bring some pain to your character, a reason to suffer, a meaning or motivation for this character to overcome. You will find plenty of references on our board to use as a start point but the motivation your characters and stories have must come from a personal place, and since we are all suffering as part of the human condition, I'm sure you will have some interesting stories to tell.

Have a look at the video and file to find more technical insights during this process, I think I'm moving forward to illustrations like I used to, but nevertheless, these series feel more authentic than the ones I used to do in the past, more "me".

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