Crafting and fanart once again - Why Am I Making This, Issue #6
Hello friends,
Life just won't stop being rough this year, huh? But I don't think anyone really needs to hear anything extra about that. So I'll get right into what I've been up to.
(It's Julien, by the way. This is my monthly art newsletter. If you're new here, I hope you enjoy! If you don't, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of the email. I won't be mad.)
A return to crafting
After writing my last newsletter (the one with all the paintings), I think it hit me that I had really used up all my painting energy for a good little while. I had absolutely no desire to work on any paintings. Nothing wrong with that. I also had an interesting conversation with an art friend who generously agreed to review my website, especially in re: applying to galleries with my paintings.
She had a lot of useful things to say, but the bit that stuck with me, and that apparently guided my creative pursuits for the last month-or-so, was that it might not make sense to have fanart on my website if it was just something I did for fun, and not part of my artistic goals (such as having my paintings in a gallery).
Apparently this disconnect between "fun" art and "serious" art didn't sit right with me (it's something that has been on my mind a lot over the past year), and I started thinking, once again, about what I want from art and why I'm making what I'm making. (Newsletter title drop alert.) I still don't have much of a coherent answer, but one thing that stuck in my mind is how, for years, I have wanted to have an artist table at a fan convention. I love going to comic cons, anime cons, and indie comics fairs, and whenever I go I want nothing more than to be one of the people at a cute table with lots of interesting items.
With this thought at the front of my mind, I ordered a few supplies to make painted leather keychains, and went crazy.
I also took a few more nice product-y photos of the ceramics I've made over the course of this year.
(By the way, I would be very happy to sell most of the ceramics and all of the keychains - if something catches your eye, go ahead and reply to this email and we'll see if we can work something out!)
To be honest, I have plenty of things I could bring to table at a convention. I just need to get it all together, believe in myself, and apply (whenever they can start happening again). I want to have stickers made, and little postcard prints! I want to make more keychains! I want to make plush keychains! I want it all!
How does that all fit into who I want to be as an artist? Only time will tell.
Waves of fanart enthusiasm
With ideas in my head for making stickers, I thought it might be a good idea to get back on the digitally-colored clean-lineart train.
If you read my paintings newsletter, you might remember that I went through a fanart phase back in May, primarily centered around She-Ra. I really struggled, then, with drawing cartoon characters so they looked like themselves, in poses that felt natural. Here's a couple of sketchbook examples where I was really on the struggle bus. (And remember, I drew these at the same time as I was doing the paintings at the beginning of the last newsletter - I wasn't just totally bad at art, I just couldn't manage to do casual, effortless character sketches!)
I had another burst of fanart enthusiasm in August, when I became obsessed with a Disney cartoon called The Owl House. I had the same frustration with being bad at drawing the characters loosely and casually, and had a brief stint of practicing a lot of poses from figure drawing websites, which I think did help a lot.
And now I'm having another burst of fanart enthusiasm and figure drawing practice. I think it's working out okay. I've drawn characters I like from quite a few fandoms, but at the forefront of my mind is a very very popular new indie video game called Hades, which has, perhaps, my favorite cast of characters of any video game, ever. It cannot be overstated how much these characters have taken over my mind. Here's a pile of drawings I've done lately, Hades characters and otherwise.
Excited to get to coloring more of them (I need to find a new coloring workflow...) and excited to see what I draw next.
Thanks for listening to me grapple with what art means to me, as usual. Traditional landscape paintings, modern portraits, pen-and-ink/digital fanart, cutesy ceramics and keychains... I just can't help it that I want to do everything. It's who I am.
Maybe it's even... good!
Talk to you soon,
Julien