Information on Agoraphobia:
Agoraphobia is an extreme or irrational fear that stems from having anxiety or panic attacks in crowded or public locations, and the person experiencing the anxiety or panic attacks avoiding their fears. This avoidance tactic will reinforce the fears, and cause the anxiety to increase over time. Agoraphobia can cause people to struggle with leaving their homes, being in crowded areas, or using public transportation, which can have strong impacts on home and work life, socializing, and can often lead to depression and occasionally substance abuse if left untreated. Approximately a third of people who have experienced agoraphobia have achieved a complete recovery, and around half of the people who have experienced agoraphobia have experienced improvement, but still struggle with their symptoms on occasion. Approximately one in five people who struggle with agoraphobia continue to experience troublesome symptoms.
Why I Chose Agoraphobia:
I decided to chose Agoraphobia as one of the monsters that I wanted to kickstart my second round of Mental Monsters because it is something that has had an impact to loved ones in my life, much like many other mental disorders that I have covered so far in my Mental Monsters project. I know what it is like to be on the other end of things, struggling to share a connection with someone because their fears have taken ahold of their lives and their mind. I have seen how having agoraphobia can have such a strong impact on somebody’s life, and how it can cause many challenges, even years after.
I also chose Agoraphobia so that I could also understand it more than what I already knew. I wanted to understand what could cause agoraphobia to develop, and how it would get worse. I wanted to be able to understand on a deeper level to be able to provide as much support as I possibly could for the loved ones in my life.
The Birthing of the Monster:
I started creating this piece by doing some concept sketching in my sketchbook. I played around with quite a few ideas, some including making the monster incorporate some type of cage. I filled an entire page in my sketchbook with concept sketches, in the end ultimately deciding on one of my first sketches. I then consulted with my significant other, chatting with them about Agoraphobia, and describing certain elements of the piece, and getting some feedback. They actually gave some incredible feedback on the piece, and ultimately ended up helping me make some crucial design changes that ended up showing in the final piece.
After finishing the sketching process, I got out my light box and transferred the sketch over to some watercolor paper, making sure to carefully trace so that the linework would be light enough to erase with ease later on. After it was transferred, however, I started to make some very poor decisions on how I was approaching the piece.
The first mistake that I made was deciding to line the piece with the ink that I have that is non-waterproof. Rookie mistake on my end using non-waterproof when I was about to paint the piece in watercolors, if I’m going to be frank. But after realizing my mistake, I decided that it was something I could likely work around, and would be able to still complete the piece, but with a bit more of an effort involved.
The second mistake that I made was deciding on a color concept without doing any kind of mock-ups in advance. I just went right in with watercolors, and was hoping that it would be a good outcome. Unfortunately, what came out on the paper didn’t match what I had in my mind at all, and I was absolutely hating it. I was starting to question all of what I had done, wondering if the design itself was also something I hated, and was struggling hard with what I was seeing before me. I pushed through to the completion of the piece, however, in hopes the entire time that I would simply be able to fix it to my liking, and then I could redeem the piece. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and this led to me wasting even more of my time working on a piece I wasn’t satisfied with.
I slept on it for a day or two, trying to decide what I wanted to do next. Was I going to show this as the final piece and simply overlook the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with the piece, or was I going to completely start over, and try to create it the way that I was satisfied with? My decision was that I wasn’t going to post art I wasn’t proud of; what would that serve? I also came to this conclusion because I thought it would be a great learning lesson for myself. So, I started over entirely, back to tracing the piece on the light table onto the final watercolor paper, making sure to carefully trace so that the linework would be light enough to erase later on.
The second time for the linework, I learned my lesson, and decided to use my waterproof ink, knowing how much of a pain it was the previous time to try and work around non-waterproof ink with the paints. This decision ultimately made the entire creating process the second time around much easier and faster, and I was thankful I had learned my lesson.
After completing the linework, I decided that I was going to also learn from my second mistake of jumping right into the coloring process. I took a photo of the piece, and uploaded it into Photoshop, where I then could create numerous color samples side-by-side, and decide which color combination I thought worked best for this piece. I tested yellows and oranges, yellows and greens, blues, and purples, and in the end, I decided on the yellow and orange color palette.
From there, the rest of the piece was fairly easy to complete. I painted the rest of the piece with watercolors in the color scheme that I had chosen, and then created the background with india ink in various dilutions with water. I finished the piece up with some white highlights and black touch ups to make everything have a great finished look and to make everything really pop.
Agoraphobia is an extreme or irrational fear that stems from having anxiety or panic attacks in crowded or public locations, and the person experiencing the anxiety or panic attacks avoiding their fears. This avoidance tactic will reinforce the fears, and cause the anxiety to increase over time. Agoraphobia can cause people to struggle with leaving their homes, being in crowded areas, or using public transportation, which can have strong impacts on home and work life, socializing, and can often lead to depression and occasionally substance abuse if left untreated. Approximately a third of people who have experienced agoraphobia have achieved a complete recovery, and around half of the people who have experienced agoraphobia have experienced improvement, but still struggle with their symptoms on occasion. Approximately one in five people who struggle with agoraphobia continue to experience troublesome symptoms.
Why I Chose Agoraphobia:
I decided to chose Agoraphobia as one of the monsters that I wanted to kickstart my second round of Mental Monsters because it is something that has had an impact to loved ones in my life, much like many other mental disorders that I have covered so far in my Mental Monsters project. I know what it is like to be on the other end of things, struggling to share a connection with someone because their fears have taken ahold of their lives and their mind. I have seen how having agoraphobia can have such a strong impact on somebody’s life, and how it can cause many challenges, even years after.
I also chose Agoraphobia so that I could also understand it more than what I already knew. I wanted to understand what could cause agoraphobia to develop, and how it would get worse. I wanted to be able to understand on a deeper level to be able to provide as much support as I possibly could for the loved ones in my life.
The Birthing of the Monster:
I started creating this piece by doing some concept sketching in my sketchbook. I played around with quite a few ideas, some including making the monster incorporate some type of cage. I filled an entire page in my sketchbook with concept sketches, in the end ultimately deciding on one of my first sketches. I then consulted with my significant other, chatting with them about Agoraphobia, and describing certain elements of the piece, and getting some feedback. They actually gave some incredible feedback on the piece, and ultimately ended up helping me make some crucial design changes that ended up showing in the final piece.
After finishing the sketching process, I got out my light box and transferred the sketch over to some watercolor paper, making sure to carefully trace so that the linework would be light enough to erase with ease later on. After it was transferred, however, I started to make some very poor decisions on how I was approaching the piece.
The first mistake that I made was deciding to line the piece with the ink that I have that is non-waterproof. Rookie mistake on my end using non-waterproof when I was about to paint the piece in watercolors, if I’m going to be frank. But after realizing my mistake, I decided that it was something I could likely work around, and would be able to still complete the piece, but with a bit more of an effort involved.
The second mistake that I made was deciding on a color concept without doing any kind of mock-ups in advance. I just went right in with watercolors, and was hoping that it would be a good outcome. Unfortunately, what came out on the paper didn’t match what I had in my mind at all, and I was absolutely hating it. I was starting to question all of what I had done, wondering if the design itself was also something I hated, and was struggling hard with what I was seeing before me. I pushed through to the completion of the piece, however, in hopes the entire time that I would simply be able to fix it to my liking, and then I could redeem the piece. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and this led to me wasting even more of my time working on a piece I wasn’t satisfied with.
I slept on it for a day or two, trying to decide what I wanted to do next. Was I going to show this as the final piece and simply overlook the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with the piece, or was I going to completely start over, and try to create it the way that I was satisfied with? My decision was that I wasn’t going to post art I wasn’t proud of; what would that serve? I also came to this conclusion because I thought it would be a great learning lesson for myself. So, I started over entirely, back to tracing the piece on the light table onto the final watercolor paper, making sure to carefully trace so that the linework would be light enough to erase later on.
The second time for the linework, I learned my lesson, and decided to use my waterproof ink, knowing how much of a pain it was the previous time to try and work around non-waterproof ink with the paints. This decision ultimately made the entire creating process the second time around much easier and faster, and I was thankful I had learned my lesson.
After completing the linework, I decided that I was going to also learn from my second mistake of jumping right into the coloring process. I took a photo of the piece, and uploaded it into Photoshop, where I then could create numerous color samples side-by-side, and decide which color combination I thought worked best for this piece. I tested yellows and oranges, yellows and greens, blues, and purples, and in the end, I decided on the yellow and orange color palette.
From there, the rest of the piece was fairly easy to complete. I painted the rest of the piece with watercolors in the color scheme that I had chosen, and then created the background with india ink in various dilutions with water. I finished the piece up with some white highlights and black touch ups to make everything have a great finished look and to make everything really pop.