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Update 16 Sep 2012 - A Glimpse Into My Artistic World
13 years ago
Hi folks,
It's been a while since I posted any kind of update to my FurAffinity page - something which has led some people to question whether I'm actually still doing anything or not.
Well I am. Crater-loads, in fact. But I'm just not finishing any of it.
I've just been through my folders and done a tally. At present, I have 33 individual images suspended at various stages of colouring. Thirty-three. Some of these are panels for comics, while others are single pieces.
However, a growing proportion of these are new 'profile images' for my website - simple poses of each of my 12 characters as part of an overhaul I've been planning for a couple of years now in order to bring things up-to-date with both my current artistic style and web-page design abilities. Since finishing my postgraduate course, I've been attempting to make it my mission to get that damned overhaul done, along with all the new graphics that need to go with it - and putting those various other projects on the back-burner in the process.
In short, draw one simple image of each of my characters. Sounds a straightforward task, no?
It's Sunday evening - I have just ripped up my second draft of Tembe's profile image because I've spent FIVE HOURS unsuccessfully trying to draw just his FACE.
Guys, art is not fun when it gets like this. When you know you are a decent artist, but you cannot get the simplest of things right no matter how long you spend on it - and as much as you tell yourself to spare the hassle and settle with whatever you've got, you know you'll soon grow to hate the picture if you don't get it right to begin with.
It's frustration like this that has caused this simple process of making 12 new profile images to become an irritating task that has taken me three weeks and counting to simply draw and scan six of them. It's frustration like this that makes me feel like I simply cannot be bothered with art at all. When it gets like this, I simply find absolutely no joy in it - and the truth is, as my earlier 'Sixty Things That Piss Me Off' journal attests, it's like this most of the time.
Not to lash out at anybody, but when folks come to me and say "hey Rex, you should draw more", or "that picture was cool, now make one of so-and-so doing this", I don't think they have a bloody clue what I go through to produce a piece of artwork. Perhaps it's the waves of sketchers and speed-painters out there who can produce a perfect image in a matter of hours that give some of these people the impression it is so quick and easy for all artists, but it isn't. I am one of those artists for whom any piece of work takes days, even weeks. And nobody see these moments where I get wound up, where I obsess over millimetres of detail to no avail, where I feel like tearing my hair out because I just can't draw something that somebody of my ability and experience should be perfectly capable of doing quickly and easily.
I would love to churn out hundreds of pictures of each of my characters or any number of others - and indeed I have the ideas to do so - but moments like this make it almost impossible for me to feel motivated to draw a single one of them.
So there you have it. A little glimpse into my artistic world. Apologies for the rant, but after five hours of clenching up and achieving nothing, I felt like I needed the catharsis of putting the feeling into text.
Happy days...!
RRRex
It's been a while since I posted any kind of update to my FurAffinity page - something which has led some people to question whether I'm actually still doing anything or not.
Well I am. Crater-loads, in fact. But I'm just not finishing any of it.
I've just been through my folders and done a tally. At present, I have 33 individual images suspended at various stages of colouring. Thirty-three. Some of these are panels for comics, while others are single pieces.
However, a growing proportion of these are new 'profile images' for my website - simple poses of each of my 12 characters as part of an overhaul I've been planning for a couple of years now in order to bring things up-to-date with both my current artistic style and web-page design abilities. Since finishing my postgraduate course, I've been attempting to make it my mission to get that damned overhaul done, along with all the new graphics that need to go with it - and putting those various other projects on the back-burner in the process.
In short, draw one simple image of each of my characters. Sounds a straightforward task, no?
It's Sunday evening - I have just ripped up my second draft of Tembe's profile image because I've spent FIVE HOURS unsuccessfully trying to draw just his FACE.
Guys, art is not fun when it gets like this. When you know you are a decent artist, but you cannot get the simplest of things right no matter how long you spend on it - and as much as you tell yourself to spare the hassle and settle with whatever you've got, you know you'll soon grow to hate the picture if you don't get it right to begin with.
It's frustration like this that has caused this simple process of making 12 new profile images to become an irritating task that has taken me three weeks and counting to simply draw and scan six of them. It's frustration like this that makes me feel like I simply cannot be bothered with art at all. When it gets like this, I simply find absolutely no joy in it - and the truth is, as my earlier 'Sixty Things That Piss Me Off' journal attests, it's like this most of the time.
Not to lash out at anybody, but when folks come to me and say "hey Rex, you should draw more", or "that picture was cool, now make one of so-and-so doing this", I don't think they have a bloody clue what I go through to produce a piece of artwork. Perhaps it's the waves of sketchers and speed-painters out there who can produce a perfect image in a matter of hours that give some of these people the impression it is so quick and easy for all artists, but it isn't. I am one of those artists for whom any piece of work takes days, even weeks. And nobody see these moments where I get wound up, where I obsess over millimetres of detail to no avail, where I feel like tearing my hair out because I just can't draw something that somebody of my ability and experience should be perfectly capable of doing quickly and easily.
I would love to churn out hundreds of pictures of each of my characters or any number of others - and indeed I have the ideas to do so - but moments like this make it almost impossible for me to feel motivated to draw a single one of them.
So there you have it. A little glimpse into my artistic world. Apologies for the rant, but after five hours of clenching up and achieving nothing, I felt like I needed the catharsis of putting the feeling into text.
Happy days...!
RRRex
Well... Not sure what this was supposed to help, but I feel like giving your toes an encouraging pat ;)
Rexar's design is only distinctive because I created him at a time when I knew bugger all about how to draw dinosaurs. The eye ridges have stayed over the years but have been gradually toned down. And to be fair, in stylistic terms, the rest of my characters are pretty generic and indistinct - with the possible exception of Bubba.
You truly are and amazing artist, and the quality of your artwork definatly shows the amount of time and effort dedicated on them. Sorry to hear youve been getting some slack here and there from people about wanting to see more art from you. After posting this journal I would hope there would be a better understanding :3
Keep being awesome dude!
Just a rant, I guess. Thanks for your support though - I've seen your livestreaming and it seems you can get things done rather quicker than I can!
*laughs* I can draw quicker, but ya gotta realize my style is SUPER simplistic. XD I do like putting on a show and drawing silly stuff. Not too much of the fetishy stuff however. I'm sure you get them as well asking for specific things and whatnot.
*shrugs* it's the nature of the beast. I do hope that doesnt discourage you too terribly much!
You'll get that art mojo when it comes :)
And 33 unfinished pieces is a lot of art in progress...I can't standing having more than one or two pics in progress at any one time. I simply have to finish what I'm working on before doing something new!
Must make the work a little more worth while I imagine?
Like you Im still stuck using traditional media however I have thought many a time about going fully digital just to avoid such complications. Problem is Im such a technophobe I will be lucky if I manage to install a tablet properly, let alone use it right!
I've given up trying to use my tablet to draw, to be honest. I hate it enough when I'm having to use it for animating, let alone start using it for precision drawing as in my artwork. Plus I really struggle to work on a screen where you can't have close view and full view at the same time (I know there are window options but it's not the same!)
If you have done about half a pic that's looking fantastic and then you completely cock up a portion of it beyond salvation (or a bunch of smudgy rubber marks). Complete the rest or it anyway then draw the bit you fucked up on on an entirely new sheet of paper using the original to trace the surrounding areas so that you get the size just right.
This means you can have as many attempts as you like at the troublesome part and all you need to do next is scan the images in and using some very basic copy, past and resize tools, put the new corrected section over the old one (wont matter if it doesn't line up perfectly at this point) because after that you can trace the thing as a whole.
This sounds lengthy but its a lot less stressfully then drawing the same entire image 3 times and having to restart from scratch every time theres a mistake...
So all this takes is a scanner, the ability to trace something, a program that allows copy and paste and the will to ignore your mistakes on the first draft with the knowledge that you can still fix it later on.
I often end up tracing portions of my pictures (either due to serious errors/paper damage elsewhere, or sometimes just issues of placement/proportion) in order to preserve the parts I've done correctly and combine them with new corrected sections. I've been doing that for many years.
The thing is, I don't ink. The pencil outline you see on my final pictures is the same pencil outline from the original piece of paper. There's no digital outline laying over the top of it. As such, the only way I can 'trace the thing as a whole' is to do so on paper. And I often do - rarely is my final draft more than a trace from the previous version(s).
The hardest thing to gauge now is whether or not leaving things for a while will ease your pain and spark a new enthusiasm to finish what you started or if a break will only make the come back that much harder.
What are the incentives/rewards for doing such hard work may I ask?
Secondly, I'm an artist. I've got some art qualifications under my belt and I've always been obsessed with creating pictures of the highest quality I can. So part of the incentive to work hard on the picture is to reach my own personal best standards - and then, of course, beat them later. That attitude is what has brought me from my crude, crappy artwork of 2007 to the standard of the profile images you'll soon be seeing. (But, sadly, it's also the attitude that has driven away all the easy-going fun from my art and made it feel more like work.)
And thirdly, since first discovering the fandom, it was something of a relief and a release for me to discover other people who shared the same desires I had. As such, there's a great deal of fun for me in seeing other people respond positively to the visualisation of those formerly secret ideas I keep getting in my head all the time. I do like it when my artwork pleases other people, yet I find it pleases them more when it's well done - and admittedly, the scale of the response often makes it feel more like it was worth it. If there wasn't an audience for it, I'm not sure I'd be putting anywhere near as much effort into it.
So it's a mixture of things really. But I'm much like you in terms of timescale. It is very rare for me to be able to produce a final quality outline ready for upload within one day. I flesh out the idea by starting off with a loose sketch which often doesn't seem too complicated, but when I try to firm up the sketch into a more detailed outline, I suddenly run into roadblocks - the fuzzy scribbles from the original sketch often mask areas of major complexity that I didn't need to tackle until this point, and millimetres make a massive difference to whether the character looks how I want them to or not. I end up losing patience with it, procrastinating for hours as if I don't want to face the challenge of it, or ultimately on some occasions, not working on it for months because it has annoyed me too much. Worse than that, I often find that the firmed up draft is too smudgy or dirty to scan, so I have to draw it one more time just to tidy it up - which, of course, comes with its own pitfalls and complications.