What Was I Saying...?

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

http://livestre.am/1bjUt

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

-TG

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

-The Gneech

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

Thorn (a.k.a. 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

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

Well, not really, but this is a brilliant piece and deserves to be shared:


"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.

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!




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

-The Gneech

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

-The Gneech

...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