A Change of Pace, or Part I of my Discussion on Art

Before anything else, I think I should announce to no one in particular that I have a Twitter, I should probably integrate this place and that one a lot more than I should. I'll tweet this blogpost later.

It's high time that I try to shift my format here somewhat, it's worth a try. This blog is supposed to be another means for the flourishing of creativity and not a chore or archive where I store some of my art. Thus begins the first of many experiments. I hope you find some joy in them, whoever you are. If you don't want to listen to my ramblings, scroll down below and head straight to the pretty pictures.

So, art. As this is an art blog, what do I, the owner of this blog, think is art?

Art, I should think, is wholly different from technical exercises and works such as treatises, scientific papers, one's daily grind with figure drawing, studies of another person's art, etc. I do not deny the creative capacity of these things, in fact I am wholly cognizant of the creativity and richness in thinking that goes into well-done research and deep thinking and reflection that goes into the sciences and the study of art nor do I deny the style of one's writing and original ways of thinking over data and theory that can come out of a technical exercise (look to men like Joseph Schumpeter or John Maynard Keynes as examples of amazing stylists, and in contrast there is Friedrich August von Hayek and Adolf Hitler for the poor stylists; an ordinary writer that is not so much a good stylist nor a poor writer would be Roger Garrison or Milton Friedman (and yes, you read that right, I have read Chamberlain's translation of Mein Kampf out of curiosity to know the man's thought himself, it was shit - interesting - but shit)), rather I believe that there is a qualitative element to art that sets it apart from these things. The main thing? I think it's a combination of storytelling and the extraction of emotion from the audience of one's output that makes it lean more as art or lean more as a work of technical capacity, thus my determination of polemics as art more than serious pieces of political philosophy. This is a somewhat Romantic take on the essence of art and the artistic endeavor. I know take this time to say that I do not limit art to the visual, I take song, dance, a good tale told, a sand castle, all of those things, as art, memes too are art, very post-modern (or meta-modern, whichever). Art is more than a renaissance painting or a good comic book cover, it is emotion and concepts embodied in order to illicit a response of an emotional sort from the audience. Science is a materialist endeavor which seeks to comprehend the world within a lens which holds back as much metaphysics as possible as it seeks relations and a consistency in behavior in material things and between material things, the matters of the transcendent are more in line with theology and philosophy (but not mutually exclusive given the scope of things like Physics); learning the subtle curves of the bones of the body as they reveal themselves from the flesh of your model is finding the relations between shapes and perfecting it, art is transcendent in how it brings something out of you by making you feel something from the interplay of the shapes and image's associations. Science divorces you from emotion, art makes you revel and feel emotion. 

Such are my conjectures on art, more on this some other time. NOW ON TO THE MUCH MORE BORING SHIT LIKE WHAT I'M UP TO ART-WISE.

I realize that it's time to expand my drawing subjects again, which has only been refining the thumbnails for my comics adaptation of a public domain novel and drawing some pokemon for Anons on the /vp/ drawthread (the /vp/ drawthread is kinda slow but I find that it's a lot better than the ones that I've seen on other boards). Something that might pique one's interest is that my friend invited me to do some collaborations with her, draw some fun stuff and hang out with a friend. Given her interests, what better way to bind with a guy like me and a girl like her than to draw the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? She likes metal and Hellboy, as do I, and a lot of other traditionally masculine interests. Fun. I'll be talking more about this later when I have something concrete to share beyond mutual interest.

On the technical aspects, I have a few problems: my wrist is killing me and my scanner, possible the computer itself, is undergoing some problems. The wrist thing is a problem given how my right hand is my drawing hand, writing hand and the one that I prefer to use to eat with for both holding a utensil and the occasional eating with one's hands. I need a splint for it and just buying some one-size-fits-all types would not be the smartest idea. I used to stretch my hand a lot too but that comes with its own problems, mainly looking like a weirdo in public. I'm shameless but I can't be totally shameless, I HAVE to have some standards, somewhere, somehow.

Finally, on to the drawings.

An older Aceroli hugging a Purugly.

An Anon wanted some Swablu being cute, so I made some bothering the male MC from Pokemon Sword and Shield with Scorbunny.

A kind Anon cleaned up my drawing.

Returning to a More Consistent Schedule is a Pain

There was a time in my life when I could keep this place in regular enough updates, same with my reading - doing at least some of that a day beyond the mandatory figure drawing exercises to keep at least somewhat fresh and some light reading. I blame my math exercises for screwing my internal clock up for the reading bits but there is no excuse for not drawing. I'll get better, I promise.

Some New Crap

Getting into drawing and inking again for a week or so now has allowed me to creep back into brush inking as well, not just inking with my usual fountain pens:

I think I did this with my Rotring Art Pen with some Noodler's Bad Black Mocassin ink. Kinda klunky but I'm proud of this one as well, it was okay.

Treading back into brush inking for the first time in a long time with this drawing of Kid Melee for Rob Johnson's Miss Melee. I could have done worse but this isn't bad either, tbh.

Finer control here after that practice from above. It was fun too. I should try to ink with a non-brush pen brush tool again. Inking with a marker was fun too.

Pokemon Designs Are Just Too Cute (UPDATE)

All the jokes about the girl PC, aka Shield-tan to some, being a drunk, loud and tough Scottish lass makes me imagine that she'd be similarly rough with her pokemon. Of all the pokemon of the new gen SO FAR, the Scorbunny is my favorite. I adore how he looks like, the fluffy little thing. The drinking is to deal with the suffering his mistress puts him through, the booze comes from the Scott's own reserves.

This is just a little shitpost on my part. I love this little bunny, I might even buy the new game (if I get a switch that is - hopefully they'll port it).

I saw a request on a Scorbunny thread on /vp/ (no, I'm not obsessed, shut up) and I jumped on it. Why not?

HE'S BACK

I think I can safely say that my artblock is gone and I can draw without feeling weighed down and merely seeing it as an obligation again. I can partially thank my recent binge of Dark Souls 1 (not the Remaster) on the PS3 as part of my regaining the drive and desire to draw for art's sake once again and get out of that hole that an extreme focus on the practice of one's fundamentals and figure drawing can put you under. As such, be prepared to see some drawings of Dark Sun Gwyndolin, son of Gwyn. I swear that he's so interesting. I've also honed my figure drawing skills with some of Villpu's help, it's more than what Hampton has done for me so far, I should think. I can't wait to actually finish an artbook for the first time and actually have drawn and replicated of it as much as I can.

I can also thank the obligation of a Secret Santa exchange as part of my return to drawing for its own sake.

Artblock

I just haven't been able to do much drawing beyond the usual daily grinding (thirty minutes or so of figure drawing basically), not much to share there either seeing as I've transitioned to using a whiteboard and a market to draw with than say using paper like how I've traditionally drawn. Drawing on paper is handy since I can go over the drawings later and play around with those with some inking or drawing clothes over them, crap like that. Maybe I need some paper again...  I haven't seen much joy in the entire enterprise of art itself recently.  It's probably an outgrowth of my personal issues lately. Oh well.

Issues with Painting

I liked this painting I did a lot. I'd like it even more if a little hadn't accident occurred: some ink spilled on the right cheek of the girl. To compensate for the damage, I made the skin redder with a thicker application of PY43 and PR122, Winsor-Newton and White Nights watercolors and as much lifting as I could manage. I did need to overwork the paper in the process but that doesn't matter. Sad, but that's how it is. I still managed to salvage most of it, so that's a relief. I did at least two other watercolors prior to this before I finished with this one. I dare say I'm almost proud of it. I only used three brushes (technically four) on this, a 1/2 inch oval, a 1/4 inch oval, and a Kuretake waterbrush body with the bristles of a Pentel waterbrush. Jean Haines is right, you only need so many brushes for a painting. The ovals did the heavy lifting, the waterbrush did mostly lifting and adding small additions of color when and where needed. I should do this more often.

Forrestry and Inking

I had some fun inking some stills of tropical Southeast Asian forests. I really enjoyed it and I want to get better at it. I did most of them with my brushes

The first saw some experimentation on my part on smudging my inks. The result is kind of shit but I'm learning and I have some things to study too so it isn't so bad. I'm proudest of the second to the last pic, it's easily the most interesting and unique one of them all. I'd like to do more of those. I need to be more naturally abstract with the other patterns and textures, chunky forms of mostly symmetrical shapes aren't going to help my desire to show the inconsistencies and beautiful chaos of nature and its totality.

There's this too. It's just more fun with the marker and I absolutely love it. I'm trying to me looser with my inks now and not being so anal about super precision, as long as it's relatively thin and I can do the abstract lines and forms easy with the fatter brushes and the marker,  I'm freakin happy.

Dart With Destiny, Status: Completed

I can't show it in its entirety sadly, such are agreements with my partner and the site we're posting it to, but I can show parts of it.

Page Four

Page 10

Page Five

Here's a few of the pages in random order and a bit of commentary.

Page Four:
Probably my favorite page of them all because it's the most quality of them all at least in my view. Other than the Fabbrician and the wonky perspective I can't see how I can do much else to bolster this page.

Page Ten:
Panels three and four disappoint me. The pencils were nearly identical other than the head turn that the man takes when he faced Glen aka Mr. Stubbles. I thought "hey, seeing as he turns his head his clothes have to follow suit!" So I made some adjustments in the inking, and then came the realization that it won't work and how that spoiled my confidence in my inking and made me fuck the placement of the fine liner I was inking with.... it was just TRAGIC. Now it's very different and it spoiled what I was going for. Oh well...

Page Five:
Panel six (the last one, the inset panels within and between panels I count as full panels in their own right here) was cut out and replaced. Seems pretty seamless here.

I'm an Idiot and I Forgot to Upload. Better Late than Never?

Ah... Mignola. How I love thee. A friend was borrowing my Hellboy Library Editions as he visited my place, one and three specifically since they're the only ones I own, he wanted to do some studies of his art and I've been more than supportive of his forays into the fields of art. I became a bit jealous and decided to join him. Flipping to a random page on the third Hellboy Library Edition, the random flip brought me to his The Island series that Mignola had drawn and I decided to emulate the figure of the Priest as well as I can.  Like with most of Mignola's work from this late 90s and early 2000s era of his comic book illustrations, the Priest in The Island had struck itself deep in my mind's eye as a major foundation in my visual library.  I still maintain this to be my personal favorite era of Mignola's art but his 80s work is a very good contender as well.

I also wanted to play around with some cartooning and expressions. I dusted off one of my favorite abstractions from life, my rendition of the rat. You can call it a mouse, I've also heard it called a puppy. It doesn't matter. It's kinda cute and it's rodent-ish. It's good enough for me. Finding fun ways to play around with balancing and making an appealing little abstract figure are fun too. I need to do this more.

Some recent figure drawing exercises I've done. I like these a lot lately.

The Importance of Planning

How some artists like Jack Kirby are able to just draw full pages without much thought and get what they want out of them is beyond me. To be able to put pencil to paper and just let your arm and the graphite do its magic takes a certain skill or imagination not with me. Borrowing Kelley Jones' term for someone who has had an extreme influence on one's art, I am much like my "art father" Mike Mignola. I cannot just have my way with the page, I need to plan carefully only to destroy some pages after much thought as they do not satisfy a certain level of quality that I expect of myself. An extreme form of this problem is what had happened to Mike Mignola as he was writing and drawing what I believe was Hellboy: The Island. It may very well be the reason too as to why the artist changed from Mike to Duncan Fregredo from The Wild Hunt onwards up until The Fury, only coming back to the drawing board as the writer-artist for Hellboy in Hell. In any case, I'm in my own mini-The Island phase right now. I want to draw but I can't get myself to like my own craft nor my compositions. Oh well... Some mild bitching from me is the most one would be getting from for now. Till next week.

These are the abandoned The Island pages, carefully penciled and inked but still abandoned. Just like the two pages I've done so far!

This page is particularly powerful in my memories. Fifth panel, left-most face. That face is seared into my memory, likely forever.

The art from this point onwards is from the Mike Mignola-Duncan Fregredo era of the Hellboy comics. These are all from The Wild Hunt.

I Remembered that I'm a Slow Writer

I always underestimate how slow I am as a writer. Oh well, that "short" brush essay
 won't be coming any time soon, assuming you count a six-pager and counting on TNR font 12 as short. As I won't come out with that any time soon, I'll just go back to posting some sketches for now and talking about my stupid reading in the arts.

In the past month or two, I've felt as though I've stagnated and the fluidity and weight and motion that I've come to develop has ended. My figures felt stiffer and it was depressing. I blame myself for having seen that one Danny Galieote video on the asymmetry of the body and how it balances itself out in the contrasting curve as you will see below. Strangely enough, seeing the asymmetric curves again in the work of Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing: Design and Invention made it clock in my head and add something to my work that Danny Galieote took away. I like having more life and energy in my drawings again. He also broke my mental prison of trying to stay in proportion while making thirty-second sketches. As long as you capture the emotion and comprehensibility of the pose, it's good.

Some sketches I'm really proud of post-Hamptonian revitalization.

Drawn on my small whiteboard.

Another angle.

Hampton just pushed my head back into another direction, a good one. I really appreciate it. I'm more confident and happy with my work now.

The next few drawings will be assorted in subject and who was with me when I made them, the first being a riff with my friend. I'll post more of those drawings with him in the coming weeks. He came over and we had fun with all my paper and markers. I introduced him to the asymmetric curves and he's just so happy with his art now. Good for him. He's learning!

New Frontiers

I've decided. I'm going to be posting essays on this blog and making a video essay version to upload to youtube. I just need to find a way to decently record the video segments... I'll find a way. I already have a topic outline of the essay. I might have it by next week but the video part might be awhile from now. Such is life....

New horizons!

Sketches of My Studies and a Refinement of My Style

I believe that my style has evolved once more. I have no idea how to describe it but it seems to have become more unified and "internally consistent" in its form.

It's different somehow, but it's for the better. It is here that you can also see some sketches of mine where I was consciously and forcing myself to draw in a more Mignola-esque style. The reference is in Hellboy: The Conqueror Worm, bottom left panel. That's one of the particular images from Mike Mignola's canon of art that has always struck me and has burned itself in the depths of my imagination. I should probably make a series on that one day, "Artwork That Has Struck Me". That would be a good idea.

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Here are some other sketches where I actively emulate Mignola, but no as hard as with the last sketch, and play around with some mild cartooning.