It is curious that it is so common these days to seperate the creative process, the worldbuilding endeavour, into smaller pieces. I can do this and cannot do any more than that, we say.
I tend to disagree.
When I started out, I was in far poorer financial conditions than I find myself in today and, even today, they are far from ideal though they are better. I could not afford artists, cover designers, and so forth when starting out, all the creative 'talent' and energy could only come from me. I was working to support a large family in a country where decent work is hard to come by and creating in the little spare time both work and my responsibilities gifted to me.
I had to find a way. However, my manual artistic talent is, shall we say, inferior to that of my own children. I remember advice I had been given long ago, by my Information Technology AND Art teachers in Secondary School; that if I had been able to take my Art exams using a computer, I would get very high marks indeed; I had a talent but it needed some development; I had an imagination but needed help to realise it.
My first efforts for both covers and character art were, though not disappointing at the time, terrible when compared to what I can produce today. One piece would take days of fiddling only to be abandoned as ruined. I would curse both the computer, my limited skill, and my inpatience and start again. I swore to find away to truly put what I saw in my head out there for all to see. It took five years of solid work to get to the point where I am proud to display my efforts and not afraid of criticism as I am truly satisfied with the results.
It's a process, an evolution if you will, that one has to dedicate oneself to as assiduously as to the writing process itself. Dedication, as the late great Roy Castle used to sing, dedication, dediiiiicaaaation, that's what you need....
I started, back when I was 14 years old, before computer-based art & design was really a thing, drawing my ideas in pencil. It took so long and was far from satisfactory. Here I learned my lesson, one which would stay with me.
I had a friend who was quite talented as a comic artist, especially in Sci-Fi. He offered to take my pencil sketches and turn them into something much better and I agreed. Don't get me wrong, Lawrence, your drawings were excellent but you interpreted my sketches as you saw them but I had not fully realised what I had imagined. Your work was great but your style is not my style and the result was not what I wanted, not truly.
There was only one solution; do it myself or not at all.
There was a problem though, I was no artist of the visual format, I thought, my efforts were not great at best, awful at worst. I was determined though, I could do better.
The Evolutionary Process
Consider the evolution of the images above, of the famous Dracograth of the Empyraeum Cycle. These were created in 2017, 2019, and 2021 respectively. The first one, drawn in 2017, was a direct recreation of the aforementioned pencil drawing I made in 1992/3. The second was an attempt to improve on and create more detail and realism in that, and the third was what i had been imagining all along! Now, at the time, I was happy with the 2017 interation, I was proud of it, but I was not satisfied with it. I'd learned from my earlier mistakes and edited copies not originals but I ditched most of them because they were not good enough. It took years of experimentation, most of that a failure, and of learning new techniques to arrive at what I can now call the "Final Version."
I'll leave him alone and fiddle no more because, were someone to turn him into a 3D-Printed model and paint him, I'd be a happy fellow indeed, I'd be proud to display him on a shelf and would probably be insufferable on social media for a while.
I'd be proud, though, that's the important part.
Staying with The Empyraeum Cycle, let's consider Lupernikes next; I always had a very fixed image of the irrascable Spartan General and Commander of the Kalshodar.
Our friend Marcos, I had a clear image on how his face would look and freely admit that Frank Herbert's descriptions of Duncan Idaho and art I had seen of that iconic character had influenced that image somewhat. For those of you that see the similarity, it's not strictly intentional but I admit it's there.
You'll notice that his iconic 'Black Sword' remains pretty unchanged since the early days, his heraldry similar, and his face, though cleaned up and better defined is the same. I merely improved the original head model that I had rather than redoing it. I likely his expression, that hardly there smile, because that, to me, embodies Marcos so well; how people perceive him versus how he really is.
Now, of course, I've given this treatment to all of the major characters and would very much recommend a visit to the Characters section of the Empyraeum website to take a look at the results of that work because we are now moving onto The Chronicles of Enoch.
In some ways, it was The Chronicles of Enoch that really got me started with Character Artwork; I had so many concepts and ideas flowing through my head, all of them exciting and new, that I wanted to bring them to life, as it were. I knew I had to create a webpage and what better thing to do than fill that webpage with exciting art together with character descriptions? So, I laboured to create original and exciting artwork and, as you can see, my initial effort was original, no doubt about that, but it was inferior. I had a good concept but I was, once more, not entirely satisfied. I was proud enough to add the first iteration of War on the website but I knew he could look better. So I took time, I researched, I tried new things. I created iteration number two and he was better by far. It maintained my original ideas and delivered on others much better but I was, at the time, not yet knowledgeable enough to bring life to the Final Iteration.
That took some work, many failed attempts, and much frustration until I got the dynamic pose I had wanted; War drawing back his barbed whip as if ready to rip the viewer to pieces with it, blazing eyes fixed firmly upon theirs, huge axe held as if to balance him, showing the amount of force he was putting into cracking that whip. Also his look, clad in the broken armour and weapons of fallen soldiers and other trappings of his calling, that was important too. I think he looks great in a rather unsettling fashion and that, my friends, was the aim all along.
Let's look at Famine next, keeping in our Horsemen Series. I, once again, had firm ideas and an interesting concept for Famine; empty horse skull on his shoulders, the scale of values in one hand, plenty of food in his possession but hoarded, evidence of those creatures which either contributed to or followed famine in his aspect and surroundings...the 2017 version was OK and had all I wanted symbolically, that is true but it wasn't that good. It was different, of course it was, but it looked poor in execution. The 2019 version went much further and represented those concepts much better, making it obvious that Famine was once an angel, making his balances more disturbing in the choices we make but he wasn't quite there.
Then we get 2021 Final Version; gaunt and diseased-looking, the physique of a starving human being but not quite, distorted and deformed. He bears a deathly sickle to harvest plenty but, if you look at his scales, one side balances the excesses of society and modern civilisation with the suffering of poorer nations; one side has too much and the other too little, yet the starving child should have a greater value than all of the trappings of our greed. In fact, the baby's side of the balance is heavier, that is intentional; guilt is very heavy indeed.
Finally, for our look into the Chronicles, we have Death. The first iteration did, of course, push all the right buttons, check all the boxes; robe, scythe, bones a-plenty, hour glass, lots of images of death and devasation, as well as clear evidence of his angelic origins. Not bad. Quite different to the usual representations of Death and quite 'on-message' for The Chronicles. But it was....well...I wasn't happy with it.
You see, the Death in The Chronicles is not the actual Angel of Death, as it were, he is more of a stand-in, an imposter, somebody doing the job while the real Angel of Death is, well, missing. On the right you can see Azrael, the True Angel of Death, the missing one. In the centre is Death, the Horseman, the imposter. I wanted the latter one to be a corruption, an interpretation, a creative cosplay even, of the former. The New Death even wears what might either be the original Mask of Azrael or a copy of it, but he covers the lower part of it with a crude metal grille to make it appear more skull-like. He is displaying both continuity and individuality at the same time. Azrael is unsettling but this Death looks like he hunts the dead rather than shepherds them; he looks like a soldier rather than a scary monk-like figure.
In Conclusion
So, as you can see, any part of the creative process is one of evolution and change. I might well have given up after my earlier efforts failed to produce what I sought in them. I might have looked for others to interpret my vision for me and, though I might be dissatisfied with the result, I would accept it because it had cost me money and I could not afford to keep paying people until I got exactly what I wanted.
Instead I set out to turn my mediocre digital artistic talent into a half-decent one. I made myself learn, improve, and discover. I forced myself to get better and I feel that this has helped me overall, to apply the same effort and unwillingness to accept almost-good-enough in everything that I do. I have made my own covers and, to be fair, they experienced a similar evolutionary process to the examples above but I am not proud to display them on their special shelving unit at home and gift them to family.
That's my central lesson here; you do the best that you can until you are able to learn how to do it better, it's a process. My best of five years ago is rubbish compared to what I consider my best of today. Trust me though, with enough of that dedication, it is possible. I'm a terrible artis but I accepted my limitations and found a way to overcome or, at least, compensate for them.
Do your best until you discover that you can do better, keep going until you are completely satisfied and, most importantly of all, be the only person to decide what your limitations are. If your work is critised and derided, them soak it up, dig deep, and show them that you can evolve past it and then show them how wrong they were.
Make your world come to life in your way and let others contribute to it when you're famous!
I could have stopped with the early iterations you have seen here but then, if I had, we'd never have gotten to see these;
Remember; don't stop until YOU are satisfied!