tetsuoshima

Hey there, it's been a long time. I've ridden the lightning and manned up, dealt with some problems and came back stronger and more myself than before. Anyway, I've decided that it's time to let this go. I've tasted enough e-fame to make myself a bit sick- with work being favorited and disseminated all over the web, although my work on here is fanart for the most part, it was still mine. My work. I know, this is what I get for posting my work online for all to see, but at the same time, I don't like it. I'm going to post a link to an Etsy account I'll be making, if any are interested, in the near future. I'm going to be doing a lot of pruning of this account and likely getting rid of everything. Because, well, I was sixteen when I made this.

I'm twenty-two now and never check this, and find it to be a conflict of my interests. I need to be making a profit off of my work and deviantArt just isn't the way to do it, I think. No offense to those who find it an excellent vehicle for theirs. It just doesn't work for me.

Yeah, so I fell off the planet for a while. Life got in the way. So I log in, and there are 4,000+ messages. Thought, there's no way I'll get to them all. Sorry, guys.

But uh, I'm in the process of building my own website, and working on getting my stuff out there, got a job, working hard, wanting to graduate with honors. But we'll see.

At least I'm not dead.

In class today, we were contemplating and discussing the legitimacy of copying a celebrity likeness for the sake of technical skill. Sure, there's a degree of admiration that an artist has for its subjects that enable them to want to lovingly render Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, or even Admiral Adama in the most realistic way possible to brush up on technical skill, but then, they're just copies of photographs. I have nothing against copying said photographs, but I also firmly believe that as an artist, a person has to have an internal dialogue; it may or may not make sense to anyone else- but it has to be there, whether in variance of stroke, exaggeration, or anything else that may suggest that the artist knows the subject matter on a personal level and cares about it to form their own meaning within themselves.

For example- it's one thing entirely to make the most academic, technically superior photocopy of a drawing of Johnny Depp (or anyone else). It takes something else to incorporate him into your own personal narrative. How do you like Johnny Depp? Why? What?

That's what I try to do in my own work- getting better at it, but I do try. Getting better. Art here oftentimes seems to be in two camps, either rendered perfectly, or in anime-style, and as much as I acknowledge the effort and skill it takes to commit to such a technicality, where is the underlying idea? What are you trying to tell me? Is it just self-fulfillment?

Like I said, I try to make a dialogue and think- why do I like what I do? What do I do to turn my likes on their head? When I think of something, what else springs to mind? Where is the dialogue to the viewer?

So that's why my portraity stuff is never just a face- if you want Patrick Stewart you could easily Google his name, and a picture of him comes up. That's what cameras are for.

Now I'm not saying that technical skill is shit and doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I think in order to be able to break the rules one has to study their ass off. But then, is one ever done studying their asses off? Not by any means. But after a few hurdles it gets easier and easier to know the rules right away, or at least fix them when told to, and then spiral off into your own unique dialogue with confidence.

That said, I'm doing a master study of one of Rembrandt's portraits, but instead of copying it outright, I'm painting Patrick Stewart performing Hamlet's soliloquy. Why? It's fun. It's more than just a portrait. And where's the dialogue? In fun. In mishmashing. In knowing more than just "Patrick Stewart is Professor X/Picard/etc etc etc", but instead how I as a viewer relate to my own subject.

And that, to me, even if it may not be as tight as the most technical portrait, is more important. And far, far more fun.

Shout out to all the people who came in the past few days, thanks for stoppin' by!

I can't work without coffee or copious amounts of caffienated diet soda.