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Summary of my art dissatisfaction post
3 years ago
Well, since it's been over a week after i posted my thoughts about my artwork no one is respoding to it or my comments anymore, i decided that it's actually a time to think everything through and summarise everything that has been written there.
But before that i need to add something that i came up when i was thinking about my art and reminded me why i have been drawing anthros at all and what also made recent expierences so painful.
I have always liked anthro animals and various works featuring them like many people already here. And since i had episodes of drawing in my youth, i decided that that i am finally going to draw them the way i like (relatively modest contemporary setting, human body size and proportions, plantigrade feet, no anatomical extremes, no anthro horses or other farmland anthros and so on) them and show them to the world, as you could already seen in my gallery. And it adds an extra level of pain, if you can see that your vision of furries doesn't really gain any more audience.
Nevertheless, after all of those considrations there are things that i believe i should do:
1. Sticking to traditional media
2. Not going to change my art style (they are MY anthros anyway)
3. Better focus on anatomy
4. Improving lights, colours and shadows
5. more interesting, dynamic poses
6. keep going to drawing workshops (but to be honest 2 hours in a day and per week is a very low amount)
7. use ocassionally different settings
Generally speaking i am very suprised that i've got so many sincere responses and almost each of them has provided something insightful towards improvement of my artwork or been suportive in general. Or even provided somediscussion channels. Also thank you very much that despite all of that you still enjoy my artwork, still like them and really want it to be better that like do. Because i still think it's not good enough as it could be.
Hope all of this is going to bring improvements soon.
But before that i need to add something that i came up when i was thinking about my art and reminded me why i have been drawing anthros at all and what also made recent expierences so painful.
I have always liked anthro animals and various works featuring them like many people already here. And since i had episodes of drawing in my youth, i decided that that i am finally going to draw them the way i like (relatively modest contemporary setting, human body size and proportions, plantigrade feet, no anatomical extremes, no anthro horses or other farmland anthros and so on) them and show them to the world, as you could already seen in my gallery. And it adds an extra level of pain, if you can see that your vision of furries doesn't really gain any more audience.
Nevertheless, after all of those considrations there are things that i believe i should do:
1. Sticking to traditional media
2. Not going to change my art style (they are MY anthros anyway)
3. Better focus on anatomy
4. Improving lights, colours and shadows
5. more interesting, dynamic poses
6. keep going to drawing workshops (but to be honest 2 hours in a day and per week is a very low amount)
7. use ocassionally different settings
Generally speaking i am very suprised that i've got so many sincere responses and almost each of them has provided something insightful towards improvement of my artwork or been suportive in general. Or even provided somediscussion channels. Also thank you very much that despite all of that you still enjoy my artwork, still like them and really want it to be better that like do. Because i still think it's not good enough as it could be.
Hope all of this is going to bring improvements soon.
Do you mean naked?
💖
I remember how popular your stuff on EF was this year and it's impressive that you are still wokring on improving further. Keep it up!
... But I still can't understand... Why not horses? Or dogs ... What did they do wrong?
First of all, anthros need animal husbandry- it's a very important thing if you want to run a civilisation and we assume by default that anthros live in a world similar to us. Animals are very important source of food, skins, fat, work and transport- one cow not only can provide milk, but if it dies, it's meat can last for days. From the skin you can make clothes (would you like to run with your fur wet?) or make simple sacks or keep water in it. Bigger animals can pull and carry very heavy things like wagons, ploughs or anthros themselves. And i don't see any other animals that could perform these duties better than our well known oxen, donkeys or horses exactly. Lack of proper heavy duty working animals is one of the main reasons why ancient american civilisations stayed in developement so far behind the Old World- more work had to be done manually.
Second thing is that i believe in some sort of anthro exclusivity that means anthros shouldn't meet their wild counterparts in the same setting, because there still has to exist some sort of wild fauna and scenario where anthros live together with wild versions of them is for me extremaly unlikely. Of coure man can say that we have in our world humans and monkeys, but still, look how big are differences between them. And monkeys are pretty much useless for us as working animals.
My problem with anthro domestic dogs is that i can't find any replacement for our dogs in their world so far. I believe that antros should evolve naturally and i can't come up with any scenario where you get wild canines as we know and from the same family branches somehow a group of anthro canines. Just imagine transitional species between them. So i don't touch this subject at this moment, because as you see it's getting a bit complicated.
So, to summarise, i don't anthropormphise horses and other farmland creatures to make their world more functional and civilised- they would have transport, food, skins, wool, cavalry and so on. And for me the best solution to do that is keeping sheep, bovines, goats, pigs, chicken, horses and similar as wild species, so no guilt of killing sentient Herr Schwein for some porkchop. Still a little bit problematic for dogs right now. Not mentioning that limiting antropormphised species makes it actually easier for them to reproduce (just look how many couples are interspecies- how do we get clean-specied individuals at first?). Of course we are talking about fictional creatures, so some logic-biological clashes would appear, but for me this so far the most logical solution to that.
You have cool art, and it is especially nice to see traditional furry art. Keep on working, maybe try some new art themes, or focus on shading, anatomy etc (which you already mentioned). So good luck to you! Also know that many other people had the same doubts as yourself! Wish you all the best!