Wrapping up McCloud

I think chapter seven was the most important chapter in the book. It didn't focus on comics and aspects of comics alone, but tried to integrate them into the general world of art. I actually hand-wrote the six steps in my notes (for another class, because I was doing the reading in another class. I was bored.):

1. Idea/Purpose: The impulses, ideas, emptions, philosophies, purpose of the work; the work's content.
2. Form: Book? Poem? Song? Painting? Sculpture?
3. Idiom: The "School" of art, the vocabulary of styles or gestures, subject matter, the genre of the work.
4. Structure: Putting it all together, what to include, what to leave out, how to arrange, how to compose the work.
5. Craft: Constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem solving, getting the job done.
6. Surface: Production values, finishing, the aspects most apparent on first superficial exposure to the work.

What is most important, as dramatically mentioned in the book is:

The Desire to be Heard,
The Will to Learn,
and The Ability to See.

Any artist, for any genre/medium, can benefit from these six steps in some way. I don't want to call myself an artist (yet), for the sake of modesty, but if I was an artist, I'd say I was struggling between steps 2 and 3. Ok, just to be clear: I play the guitar, and although I've been attracted to many styles since I've started playing (metal, punk, classical, jazz, reggae, dub, ska, etc. you name it), I've more or less stuck to Blues guitar now. I think many a guitarist chooses this genre, this style of playing, but not many can get past it and move on: their vocabulary and phrasing become limited, because they restrict themselves to only one style. Which is precisely my problem.

I need a source of inspiration, some jolt or shock in my life, to get my creative juices flowing again; then I can move on to the next steps.

The frustrated artist.