Anatomy of Art

Vision and Execution is an extreme simplification of the creative process. Let us now go a little deeper, and name some of the key principles of the process. "The Art of Art" dedicates a chapter for each of these key principles; you can think of this post as a "skeletal view" of the entire book.

Consider context. The first thing to do when approaching deliberate art is to consider what we want to achieve, and why. This is especially true when our current work is part of a bigger project, e.g. a musical soundtrack or a single panel in a comic strip. Understanding the context of our work is critical for a successful result.



Form Ideas. Where do ideas come from? With deliberate art, we usually don't have the luxury of waiting around for divine inspiration to come. Instead, we take action: we search for and collect good ideas, then use them as raw material to sculpt our original, custom-made concept.




Sketch your vision. we use our original ideas to form a mental experience of the finished work, as detailed and captivating as we can make it. Then we capture it in a quick sketch, called the "Proof of Concept".




Get familiar with your material. Achieving loose, rich results is only possible when we're theoretically and intimately familiar with our materials. With a limited investment in research and practice, we can turn a potentially stressful and stiff experience into a flowing, enjoyable creative process.



Work in passes. The execution stage starts with a very rough full-sized version of the vision. Then, we start developing it in passes. Each pass advances the entire work just a simple step toward the vision, until the result is close enough.




Chunk it. Advancing in "pure" passes throughout the entire work, is not always possible . Sometimes we need to chunk our work to manageable pieces, each of which may be a complete deliberate artwork in itself, requiring all the key principles above. Massive artistic projects may be made of thousands of deliberate artworks chunks.


Sketch! Being able to summarize a complex idea in a rough yet clear sketch, is the one basic skill required for all the key principles listed above. I call it "the creative atom", because all artwork is literally made of successive sketching - even (and especially) the most furnished and polished work. As we become better in sketching, our artwork becomes exponentially better.