Artist:
SoulCommissions

Characters:
runzu and I (Kali)

You know, I don't mean to be critical (especially of gifts) but I feel I need to highlight a few things about this piece.

Firstly; look at how I nestle into Runzu's shoulder there. I am at once on top of her and at the side, like my chest is tubular. If Soul was to draw me as I would appear naturally then I would either be laid flat and parallel to Runzu's shoulders, jutting our perpendicular away from her, or lower on her body and with my head resting much lower. Then look at Runzu's neck. See how straight it is despite her gaze angling down, with her chin physically resting on her neck? That would simply be impossible.

I really don't mean to shit on the artist, and believe it or not I don't see this as a problem. A creative and adaptive use of body proportion and perspective is often deployed in art, from neolithic paintings to renaissance art to modern cubist pieces. Its partially because the mind's eye and physical reality often stand opposed top one another. I can remember many occasions in which I snuggles up to my love, toyed with her hair, rubbed her shoulder and buried my head into her soft warmth, and in my mind all this seemingly happened all at once. But in reality we either did these things all at once or looked very awkward, and this piece looks nothing but natural and comfortable.

More than that this piece isn't meant to represent something that physically happened, it represents an idealized moment that is an amalgam of moments of moments that did physically happen and a representation of feeling Runzu and I share. In our mind this exists, and on many occasions in various places and at various times this moment did exist in a way, but nothing in this piece is literal, other than the concepts it represents.

Art achieves what the physical realm can't. If Soul was to draw us as we would have appeared in the physical realm it would look awkward as hell, especially that early in the morning. I mean six in the morning, the MORNING. Jesus. I only smile at that time of the day when someone I don't like dies, and I still look like death warmed up. But here I am, resting blissfully with the love of my life, toying with her hair with one hand with the other coyly resting on her birth mark.

This is a fine example of a creative use of perspective to represent an emotional and/or idealized reality rather than a physical reality, and I like it.