We don’t create in spite of a pandemic, we learn to create in light of it. These were the words that came to mind as I surreptitiously watched a swath of blue dragonflies in what looked like a swingers party in the reeds. The digital world can be stifling and easily exhausting when we are forced into its confines. I feel more attuned to its imperviousness in these natural surroundings. Screens seem to quell out inspirational thoughts in ways that scrawling with a pen on paper never could. I was digging through boxes last night, of ancient (high school) homework, and yes, I am so old that submitting essays longhand was still optional (and my preference, it seems). The amount of re-writing I had done was baffling, and yet I don’t remember being too bothered by it. In fact I recall it being relaxing, the automation of copying your own words out after the red pen had decimated the previous draft. The new words are written out clean, concise and with a confidence and sureness of intent. It was rewarding, the process of the final draft, especially when it was the second or third version of it. Research in those days still meant a trip to the library, where there was an awareness of a clock and a mission to be fulfilled. I just spent two hours sifting through web links about Painting in VR and barely got anything from it.
I’m having a difficult time putting the actual experience into written words. Instantly I feel tired and have the impulse to leave the table. Get a snack, go for walk, anything other than write about what it’s actually like to paint in VR. But I’m just going to jump into this freezing water right…. Now.
The first thing I did was play with the different brushes. That seems pretty common, especially for those accustomed to painting in applications like Photoshop. That first session, in my living room in Parkdale, I didn’t get very far as I was still taking it all in. Three sessions later, I’m still learning the ropes, although Tilt Brush seems fairly straightforward in its navigation. I’ve started watching a video series of tutorials by YouTube VR Educator Shameless Mayhem and it looks like that’s going to help build my foundation. Knowing my way around the controls helped a lot, especially once I started developing the motor skills about using the hotkeys – this is one of the first things I drill students on; getting out of the menu selections and making actions as automatic as early on in the game as possible. It streamlines the creative process and helps build trust in your instincts.
There’s a large room I can paint in here at the farm house, or the Stone Farm, as our family calls it. My second painting session also took place first thing in the morning, as it had the day after I’d purchased the Quest. I ‘warmed up’ by hanging out in outer space for a while, then after sneaking a quick trip to visit some whales (and float right through them), I started my session. I continued to learn the lay of the land and get further acquainted with the menus. I hadn’t slept well the night previous and I’m not sure how much that influenced things, but after about an hour I removed the headset to an overwhelming feeling of lethargy. Without thinking I went directly outside and sat down, just taking in the trees for a while. This is going to sound weird, but the feeling was that I missed them, the trees. Something had taken place that had made me feel detached, or disconnected, I’m not sure what. After that I took a nap and wasn’t up to returning to the headset for the remainder of the day.
The following day my session didn’t start until early evening. This time I really dug in to the brushes, taking my time with every one of them, adjusting its size where applicable, painting, or sculpting (I’m really not sure anymore), recognizable shapes like a dog mid-sprint, a fire, a woman walking. Once I’d done a thorough pass through all of them, I returned to one I’d taken a liking to, the velvet brush. It sketches fluidly while responding with graceful sensitivity to application of pressure via the thumb trigger. As a digital painter, the knack for working with pressure sensitivity is my jam.
It seemed like the natural path of progression would be to upload an image and start to map it out as a 3D reproduction, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Not that I wasn’t up to the challenge, but rather it seemed more important to remain in as natural a drawing state as possible, without concern for an impressive output that I could later post here. I wanted to remain in the zone where as a child I’d first learned my bearings in how I wanted to draw, and I think the “how I wanted” part is what gets stomped out first when we’re young. When I was 3 years old, I was really into drawing bunny heads floating on skyscrapers. Many, many bunny heads, and in a way where I like to think I understood the weird humour in it. It was before my princess obsession cut in and muffled the weirdness for a while. So I want to learn about myself in this new space without the infiltration of princesses, at least not till I get my bearings. Actually scratch that. I’ll leave the princesses for Anna Dream Brush.
It took a while, but eventually I found myself, both literally and stylistically. I drew a full-body self-portrait to scale in sketch strokes, viewable in consistent volumetric proportions on all angles. It was nothing fancy but finally it felt like something had stuck.
I started by marking lines that designated the key points of my anatomy: feet, knees, waist, chest, elbows, chin and the top of my head). The sketch style felt like my own artistic presence was starting to come alive in that otherwise alien space, and it was exciting. It brought me full circle to my initial concept: drawing in 3D. Not creating entire worlds and cities using a multitude of apps, but honing in on the bare bone techniques of classical drawing: perspective, form, value, volume, shape and composition. It struck me that though it might take a while, it might be possible to develop a cognitive set of motor skills that would allow me to interpret the 3D space intuitively, no differently than bringing a fork to my mouth without looking. It came down to two assumptions: first, that with practice and perhaps some established guidelines, I could devise a system for gaging 3D depth with accuracy so that I could convey an accurate sense of volume. Furthermore I could do so with sketch lines, rather than depending on the pre-packaged 3D volumetric brushes or even the clustered texture brushes. If volume can be conveyed with sketch lines, then I would be building real objects in a 3D realm, like architectural drafts or the sketches of Disney animators. And the point of that, aside from the fascination of the practice itself, would be to establish that the 3D world can become part of our spatial cognition. Which brings me to my second assumption: that I could learn how to teach it. I asked myself what it takes to gage the correct proportions – if that is even possible. Is it something that I learn intuitively with practice, the same way I learned to draw on paper?
When I finally took the headset off, I no longer had the lethargy that had followed my last two sessions. Whether I’m getting used to it or I managed to connect in a way that wouldn’t make me yearn for the trees, or if it was just on account of the gummy I’d taken prior to the session, I have yet to find out.
When I’m able to export images I’ll update them here. As it stands, it doesn’t appear possible without a connection to a PC. Later edit: Solved thanks to my advisor, Emma Westecott, who pointed me to a loophole: Android for Mac.
