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It apparently takes me two years to write a hello post.
General | Posted 15 years agoSo, basically, I signed up two years ago and then didn't log in again for a long, long time. On one hand, I wasn't sure if I really belonged here—though I have many dragon characters, I don't have many anthro characters, and I wasn't able to consistently draw a humanoid figure so why make any when normal dragons were so much more fun to draw? On the other hand... I could belong here. I mean, if I could go back five years and tell my 14-year-old self, she who was constantly turning other people into dragons and drawing them everywhere, that there was an entire internet community around making animal/creature personas out of people and drawing that, I would. Because I would have been and still am totally on board with that. Maybe 14-year-old self would still run away screaming because of the rampant smut, though. Maybe. I'm not *particularly* bothered by it nowadays, especially after doing so much internet browsing, but I think I'd rather keep that mature filter on for most purposes.
I had a bit of a breakthrough today, however. Being disgruntled with how laid-back last semester's art class (focused on graphic novels) was, I signed up for a figure drawing class with high expectations for improvement. If the folks at Concept Art and similar professional sites keep evangelizing that sort of practice, it must be worth a try, right? Except that it was frustrating, for the first three weeks, because I wondered if I was actually making a good use of my time/tuition—no drawing homework outside of class, no classmate critiques, very little theory/anatomical study, just attending and drawing the models. My teacher somehow refuses to critique my work, which is annoying because there were still loads of things I was doing wrong: proportions I wasn't getting in foreshortening situations; sloppiness with the technique, applying too much value and making the texture look metallic rather than subtle, and plain just not drawing things as they appear. I get it, I get it, it's another one of those "you get what you put in" type of classes that aren't straightforward, and because of the right-brained, memory-intensive nature of creating art, I have to be patient because a lot of improvement won't be seen until days after the practice actually occurs.
Anyway, today. I was doodling the different types of Mythic Zoocanthri (a race from the mythos that's the setting for a game I'm writing a soundtrack for; said game probably isn't ever going to be made, but I like some of the leitmotifs too much to abandon it), and found that I could draw my humanoid/anthro characters in action poses from my head. And it wasn't hopelessly hard! Some things are probably still pretty "off", but they're not a mess of measured (guessed) proportions and meaningless cylinders. Some of the muscular contours and pose shapes actually make sense for once. It's a little premature to be celebrating, but there is a pretty big difference between spazzing around without a clue what you're doing and actually placing lines and forms in a way that makes sense in the mind's eye. No doubt I'll run into another phase of art block soon (probably regarding composition or perspective, other things I suck at), but for now—I'm on a roll. I probably won't upload the sketches in question, but I'll work on a finished image using those designs. Sometime after FAWM ends, though.
So the moral of the story is, figure drawing (in a life drawing class, not just drawing gestures from photos or 3D modeling apps) really helps. A lot. One has to do a certain amount of still life drawings to know what to do, but I'm beginning to show the results of internalizing anatomy and lighting knowledge, and it's making me really excited. I think I can start drawing humanoid things, including anthro characters, from my head now.
Anyway, I'll start uploading art when I get home, for the wi-fi at my college is SLOW. This site apparently has a flood limit, so I should go with small quantities at once over a period of several days. I may even include some OLD works just to show where I used to be to contrast with where I am now. And because there are things I've drawn that I haven't done in a while—like dragons with musical instruments.
As if this journal weren't long enough already... A little word on how I plan to use this account. My main home on the artistic side of the internet will always be deviantArt. However, I have a lot of anthro related pieces I have not yet (and may never) upload to dA, so why not differentiate my galleries on different sites. On FA, I'll focus on MMS and Trilogy of the Players stuff, along with whatever actual-anthro style animals/dragons I make. I'll try to keep the fan art mostly on dA, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll keep my FA gallery Pokémon(for example)-free. I'll make a CA sketchbook to upload studies and works I want critique on.
I had a bit of a breakthrough today, however. Being disgruntled with how laid-back last semester's art class (focused on graphic novels) was, I signed up for a figure drawing class with high expectations for improvement. If the folks at Concept Art and similar professional sites keep evangelizing that sort of practice, it must be worth a try, right? Except that it was frustrating, for the first three weeks, because I wondered if I was actually making a good use of my time/tuition—no drawing homework outside of class, no classmate critiques, very little theory/anatomical study, just attending and drawing the models. My teacher somehow refuses to critique my work, which is annoying because there were still loads of things I was doing wrong: proportions I wasn't getting in foreshortening situations; sloppiness with the technique, applying too much value and making the texture look metallic rather than subtle, and plain just not drawing things as they appear. I get it, I get it, it's another one of those "you get what you put in" type of classes that aren't straightforward, and because of the right-brained, memory-intensive nature of creating art, I have to be patient because a lot of improvement won't be seen until days after the practice actually occurs.
Anyway, today. I was doodling the different types of Mythic Zoocanthri (a race from the mythos that's the setting for a game I'm writing a soundtrack for; said game probably isn't ever going to be made, but I like some of the leitmotifs too much to abandon it), and found that I could draw my humanoid/anthro characters in action poses from my head. And it wasn't hopelessly hard! Some things are probably still pretty "off", but they're not a mess of measured (guessed) proportions and meaningless cylinders. Some of the muscular contours and pose shapes actually make sense for once. It's a little premature to be celebrating, but there is a pretty big difference between spazzing around without a clue what you're doing and actually placing lines and forms in a way that makes sense in the mind's eye. No doubt I'll run into another phase of art block soon (probably regarding composition or perspective, other things I suck at), but for now—I'm on a roll. I probably won't upload the sketches in question, but I'll work on a finished image using those designs. Sometime after FAWM ends, though.
So the moral of the story is, figure drawing (in a life drawing class, not just drawing gestures from photos or 3D modeling apps) really helps. A lot. One has to do a certain amount of still life drawings to know what to do, but I'm beginning to show the results of internalizing anatomy and lighting knowledge, and it's making me really excited. I think I can start drawing humanoid things, including anthro characters, from my head now.
Anyway, I'll start uploading art when I get home, for the wi-fi at my college is SLOW. This site apparently has a flood limit, so I should go with small quantities at once over a period of several days. I may even include some OLD works just to show where I used to be to contrast with where I am now. And because there are things I've drawn that I haven't done in a while—like dragons with musical instruments.
As if this journal weren't long enough already... A little word on how I plan to use this account. My main home on the artistic side of the internet will always be deviantArt. However, I have a lot of anthro related pieces I have not yet (and may never) upload to dA, so why not differentiate my galleries on different sites. On FA, I'll focus on MMS and Trilogy of the Players stuff, along with whatever actual-anthro style animals/dragons I make. I'll try to keep the fan art mostly on dA, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll keep my FA gallery Pokémon(for example)-free. I'll make a CA sketchbook to upload studies and works I want critique on.
