When I want to say something, I just say it. Or write it down.
I think as a visual artist you communicate with other people by presenting with visual information. A good artist will take advantage of this to establish a language that is beyond words. Words themselves are visual symbols of other objects. When it comes to visual arts you have the quintessential meta-word at hand. You are creating and presenting that which put words in the ‘field’ in the first place. Emotions or sensations do not define art. If you come from a country like mine where self expression is quite dramatic, and people tend to have ‘big mouths’- there is no point to “the need to express”. Let’s say there is not much you ‘hide’ or ‘shut up’. This angst of ‘being unable to express oneself’ it’s more present in European and english speaking countries. The Latin-American concern with art tends to be different, even if art is usually defined by a very ‘franco-brittish-german’ ideals as of late. We didn’t suffer the WWII directly, etc. There are a lot of cultural ‘grounds’ that are absent (or not) depending on the background of the artist.
No one can really teach you how to convey an emotion- only you will know how. There are few illustrators who achieve this ‘personal contact’ between character and viewer. Usually direct eye-contact from character to ‘viewer’ is evaded, making it (in literary words) a ‘third person point of view’. It’s not easy to make a painting into the second or first person point of view- to put the viewer into the “You and Me” or into the “only you” position. And most attempts tend to fail. Its not unusual for even photography to fail at it- it can look fake easily. Takes something extra- a certain connection between the artist and the subject (be it on the canvas or behind the lens)- to achieve this extra personal level. Just like not every actor makes it believable… Just like an actor has to get ‘into character’ I believe visual artist have to too. The only way to convey emotions and sensations is by participating of them yourself. In abstract works this is easily done- but surely only the artist him/herself will really know what it is/was. The real challenge is in achieving this in the figurative type of arts and keeping it ‘genuine’. I have my personal decisions, like staying away from photographic reference, shutting the world out with music, and concentrating on what I want to create- without making it into a mechanical action. In the end if you want, you can go technical on it, but those first impulses and strokes are the ones who usually define how the piece turns out- and that must have space to ‘breathe’ and develop, before you become a bored painter robot.
In this particular case, the contest theme was RPG-Character Showdown. I laid out in front of me about 6 different characters and from them I was down to choose between 2. Considering the time, I chose her for being the most recent and ‘alive’ for me. I enjoyed giving life to her within words, and i had never given her a face. So the challenge for me was doing a ‘worthy portrait’- without ruining the character. I had to re-read all the info i had collected from playtime and background building etc. From there I chose on the things that should be in the work, even before I laid a sketch. Near the end more ‘elements’ started just sprouting out of impulse- but the ‘feel’ was there all the time. I stopped working once I lost the initial feel/mood and it became a bit mechanical. So i had to consider things beyond mere looks: the era (medieval), the type of art done back then, the type of garments they used, what she could do as a character, what she did, abilities, quirks, personality, and her conviction and conscience. To me she questions her own monstrousness- which is not the fact that she is a vampire but that she loses respect for humanity- it’s the inevitable apathy, and the thirst for empathy which moved me to paint her. I wanted to give a mixed glance in her eyes, a very subtle curve to the lip- but her eyes must have regret, guilt, sadness and a perverse enjoyment of this all. It’s a challenge to question, very smug but very disturbed; a hidden melancholy. This is to me the “soul” of this piece in particular.
A good illustrator must learn how to love his characters.
To me this was simple because i created her and she has tons of elements that I myself have in my own persona. It’s always better to get ‘personal’ when it comes to art. Now, as an illustrator (if this is your chosen career) usually you will come across characters that are not of your own, and you have to get in touch with them, learn them, love them (or hate) and this is the real hard part. It’s very much alike adopting instead of procreating yourself (unless you are the indy director, writer and conceptual developer yourself- all control in your hands, all decisions by your choice; which is rarely the case).
So it all depends on what you want to do really. Do you feel the need to do art because you crave certain communication with society or do you just wish to do art because you just like doing it (from a technical and “looks cool” point of view) and illustrating the words of other authors(be them novelists, poets, or script-writers/dramaturges) is what fulfills you? An illustration is always as ‘important’ as the textual body it represents; choose good ones. 
But illustration is always accompanied by a text (doesn’t matter if it’s simple or complex)- unlike other visual art variants- it depends on words. I prefer art that relies on visuals alone.
the real deal!). I played her for some time when I used to enjoy Vampire The Dark Ages. Not my usual serious work. This is what I tended to paint and draw like in my earlier years, when I was still in school.
