...Buh?

Nov. 14th, 2023 06:27 am
the_gneech: Kero Asleep (Cardcaptor Sakura)
It is just the nature of the beast (so to speak) that if you hang out in furry art circles, you see a lot of strange stuff. Lots of young people working out their problems and/or their kinks in a relatively safe anonymized space = art drawn while down mental rabbit-holes.

And, y'know, that's fine. As long as it isn't cruel and doesn't promote bigotry, as long as everybody involved is having a good time... I don't have a beef with it. Much of it is not my bag—I love me some cute fanservice but I'm generally not a fan of straight-up raunch—but in the words of Egg Chen, it's like a salad bar: take what you like and leave the rest.

But sometimes... once in a while... I am confronted with a piece that just makes me stop and go "...Buh?" Sometimes it's a case of "Bodies don't work that way!" (um, just because secretions come from there doesn't make it an orifice), sometimes it's "Why the heck would you get into this???" Occasionally it's "CAN WE PLEASE GET OFF (insert fad that annoys me here)".

I generally keep my thoughts to myself when this happens; I'm not judgey, just confused. But still. What the heck. XD

And yes, this was prompted by a piece of art that crossed my path on social media this morning. XD

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Gneech and Nii-chan)
Nii-chan, being herself

This weekend's biggest accomplishment was getting a good handle on Procreate. It was a fight, and I'm sure there'll still be conflicts—I don't want touch gestures on ANY device, thank you very little—but I powered through, producing this pic of Nii-chan by the time I was done.

My productivity (and overall mental health, which is closely coupled with it) have been slowly improving over the past several weeks, after some serious rough times earlier this year. Summer did its usual number on me, of course, but as fall came, it felt like a block broke somewhere. (I then immediately got sick, of course, but I managed to keep moving forward even then, just... more slowly.) Normally at about this time I'd toss out all kinds of determined resolutions to be even more productive, to do a dozen art pieces while working on NaNoWriMo or some such, but I'm not going to fall into that trap this time. I actually think it's a self-destructive mechanism, putting all kinds of pressure on myself which then turns into resistance, which in turn becomes avoidance and burnout, and I end up both getting nowhere, and angry at myself.

Instead, I'm just going to say that I'm enjoying being productive, and I'm going to do my best to keep doing that, because it always makes me happier. Instead of making promises I may or may not be able to keep, I'm going to do stuff... and present it to the world as a fait accompli once it's done. ;)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (LIGHTNING from my FINGERS!)
For [livejournal.com profile] panthras... a dapper panther with a monocle!


Fur Yorker by ~the-gneech on deviantART

...there's something vaguely familiar about him. ¬.¬

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
http://livestre.am/1bjUt

Or it will be within seconds!
All done! See next post.

-TG
the_gneech: (Default)
Just like the title says. Post your request here (or e-mail it to thegneech@gmail.com) and whichever one catches my fancy, I'll draw tonight and Livestream the coloring of it for anyone who wants to watch. It can be comics, fantasy, furry, pony, whatever. Just remember that anything free is worth at least what you paid for it!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Taishi Conquest)
My Little Prawny: FiendShrimp is Magic, by The Gneech

This image has been burning its way out of my head all week. I blame YOU, bronies!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Leonard machismo)
I really need to level-up my art skill. I can be very good, but I have an unfortunate tendency to be merely average.

That said, I've got a big pile o' commissions to start chewing on, that should help. Time to start knocking those out of the park!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Kero Are You Crazy)
With gaming done for 2010 and conventions bearing down on me (including, have I mentioned, Confuzzled, nudge-nudge wink-wink?), it's time to start doing some heavy duty thinking about art (as opposed to just cranking out comics, which is what I was doing before November went all pear-shaped).

Honestly, I can't say I'm happy with the current state of furry art; the always-tenuous community seems to fragmenting more than ever, and certainly the fun-and-happy-but-not-X-rated toony art that I prefer has receded further into the background. I could expound all sorts of theories about why, but without any real info to go on they'd amount to little more than "Those ding-dang furries keep liking the wrong stuff!" ... which isn't useful.

I am particularly disappointed with the current situation at ArtSpots, which recently had a makeover I didn't care for and now seems to be having a traumatic identity crisis, at least going by its forums. Again, I could expound all sorts of theories, but I don't have any real useful thoughts as to what to do about it — at least not that are likely to be embraced by the folks in charge over there. They have a vision and they're trying to pursue it, which I can't fault them for, even if I think there are some fundamental flaws in that vision.

I won't rant about FurAffinity; I've done that enough. I will say that for all the wrong ways it rubs me, it is where the users are, and what good is a website without users? But it also has so much friggin' baggage. I don't feel comfortable just sending anybody over to look at my FA page, for fear of what they might click on while they're there and then associate with me. What I want, what I've always wanted, was a place to share my art with like-minded folks in a community atmosphere, that I didn't mind also sharing with mixed company.

Feh. It's frustrating. I'm not prepared to throw my own hat in the ring with yet another furry art site attempt, but the idea is tempting. I can't tell if a worst-case scenario would be chirping crickets, or having to spend all of my free time attempting to wrangle a bunch of neurotic and demanding furries instead of actually being able to enjoy the website. I'm also not sure that if you take out all the pr0n and refrigerator art, furry actually has enough going for it to sustain itself.

-The Gneech

AC App In!

Dec. 18th, 2010 12:06 am
the_gneech: (Torey Rave)
Well, the PA tax ID came in my e-mail this evening, so I immediately got that AnthroCon dealer app in. :) Signing up for a half-table with [livejournal.com profile] sirfox this year, instead of the previous years' vast expanse of table. Gonna be hard trying to split my attention between selling and drawing again, but an artist's gotta do what an artist's gotta do!

-TG
the_gneech: (Default)
Thorn (a.k.a. [livejournal.com profile] pinkdino) posted this very nifty thing: it's a figure/gesture exercise tool for artists. (WARNING: Contains nudes.) Basically you set how long you want each picture to show, and it goes through a slideshow of models in various poses for you to quickly (or not-so-quickly) sketch before the next slide pops up. Very simple implementation, but a great little exercise.

NSFW -- There's not way to select "no nude models," but you shouldn't be doing sketching exercises at work anyway, right? *hides sketchbook under desk*

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Shiver Me Timbers)
Monkey Island Studies, by The Gneech

Fan art! Studies from "The Secret of Monkey Island, Special Edition," of the SCUMM BAR and some of its inhabitants. Practice in a different style from my usual, of subject material that just may come up in the new comic from time to time (by which I mean pirates, ships, and rickety towns, not characters that are the property of LucasArts)...

Arrr!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Taishi Conquest)
One of the most neglected, and yet simultaneously most important, aspects of comic art is drawing backgrounds. It doesn't matter quite as much in a comic strip, where a couple of talking heads floating in space has been the norm since Peanuts hit the papers, but in a comic book, you absolutely have to have a solid background in order to sell a scene.

This becomes doubly true if you're working on a fantasy story. It doesn't have to be realistic, necessarily, but it does have to look like your characters actually are somewhere. My new comic is a fantasy adventure, and the backgrounds are going to be vital to making it believable, so I figured some background and perspective practice is in order. The weather made getting out to draw some actual buildings a less-than-pleasing prospect, so I pulled out Barron's Perspective Drawing (Drawing Academy) and started going through the exercises in it.

This is what I came up with... )

Not too shabby in all. :) I guess that practice stuff pays off! The tricky part will be to keep doing good backgrounds when I'm putting characters in front of them, too...

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Leonard machismo)
I have a very hard time drawing foxes. I just can't get rid of that stupid muzzle! I end up with wolves that have been painted orange. Very frustrating.

Any artists out there have suggestions on what I can do to break myself of the Giant Honker Habit?

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
Well, not really, but this is a brilliant piece and deserves to be shared:

Steamcyle by Leo_Magna
"Steamcycle" by Leo_Magna


When I say that furry art needs more cool, fun artwork and less refrigerator porn, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Well done! :) Some lucky sod got this for $10, can you believe it?

-The Gneech

PS: Actually, it's dieselpunk.
the_gneech: (Conan Civilization Sucks)
So now my choice is FurAffinity (the Facebook of furry art), or a mangled Artspots where nothing makes sense (and is painted yellow ochre)?

Cripes. As if I wasn't having a bad enough day already.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
Well, I haven't been keeping up with the "sketch-a-day," for reasons not worth going into here, but I did manage to do one today!

Dubious Ivan is Dubious


Ivan, from [livejournal.com profile] graveyardgreg's Deathless, looking dubious. Or possibly wondering if he can steal that other guy's shirt. Hard to tell which.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Default)
And BEEF.

Thanks, GG and Leomagna! :D

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Drezzer cool)
Donkey Punches of Oats!


Maybe Punk can explain, 'cause I sure can't. ;P

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Kero Bluestreak)
Man, I dislike FurAffinity!

Why do people always flock to the annoying ones?

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Leonard machismo)
...and part of me wants very badly to go back and re-draw everything done before 2006 or so.

I'm not going to, 'cause it'd never get done, but man oh man, is it tempting!

-The Gneech

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