TODAY'S FEATURED POST

BUILDING WORLDS

Greg Ruth

[caption id="attachment_81366" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Unused spread from THE MONKEY by Osgood Perkins/NEON[/caption] World Building's one of the most underrated essentials of storytelling, and if you do it right,  one of the most invisible. In my personal opinion the holy trinity of storytelling World Building and Character Development are top tier with Plot as the tiny lagging puppy running keep up. Character and World Building are what draws you in to a story, and want to…

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EVERYDAY ORIGINAL

Night Runner

YESTERDAY’S POST

Image

The danger of reference

Jesper Ejsing

April 28, 2025 - I use photo reference all the time. I try to put them away and work from imagination but then I get insecure and I start searching in books or on the internet for things looking like the stuff I am painting. Most time it creates a fake security and I continue painting what is needed for the image anyway without using the ref. But finding it, helped me in overcoming the insecurity anyway. I still think that reference is, by large, the killer of creativity. Here is 2 things I noticed: When I paint without reference the image becomes more dynamic and spontaneous and also more personal. When I paint from reference they become more realistic and believable, seems more precise but loose a bit of the personality. I talked to Paul Bonner one day,…

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