Sta.sh
Thank you for your patience (or for forgetting that you ever wanted to have these sketches done at all XD)
I will be doing them very soon.
I WILL BE OPENING UP COMMISSIONS— SOME QUESTIONS THOUGH
And I'm really serious this time! I know I've been saying this for years but I finally managed to get a PayPal account working. *CELEBRATIONS FOREVER* I'll start to open slots next month.
I was considering cooking up some reliable samples first, but, if you're considering commissioning me, are you confident enough in the quality of my work that you wouldn't need to wait for these samples?
WORKING ON SOME COLLAB STUFF
... with
. It's gonna be awesome! By the way, good luck with those projects you have to finish soon.AND NOW FOR A BIT OF COLLABORATIVE PHILOSOPHICAL MUSING
... because some days, I can palpably feel the divide between artists, even between visual artists... even between manga-styled artists. Not that I think this divide is a horrible thing in its current extent. It reflects our diversity as artists and as human beings. But I feel like there's a potential for common ground and consequent enlightenment and growth.
What the hell am I talking about, you ask?
This is going to be one of the most raw pieces of writing you'll get from me so pardon me if it's a little hard to understand. Let me know if it's a little vague. And as always, I would appreciate it if you shared your thoughts:
You know that some artists just love to draw. Some artists love to paint. Some love to sculpt. Some love to CG, make 3D models, or write comics.
I suppose this is natural diversity. There's definitely some overlap, as people love to dabble with a mix of things. It's pretty easy to see here on dA.
But sometimes, there are some commonly-themed tensions and misunderstandings.
One I can remember distinctly is the quarrel between manga-styled artists and western-comics styled artists. Then you have the painterly concept artists who can scoff at weak ideas and amateurish draftsmanship. Then the cartoonists who think little of the artist (possibly themselves) who can't come up with an original art style or tell a story. The fine artists who create purely for aesthetics and distance themselves from mainstream or childish works.
One thing dA has definitely done for me is show me the blurred syntheses of these ideas, to the point that it has become difficult to categorize artists according to the styles they use but sort of easier to identify how artists think of what the spirit and purpose of their craft is.
I think Scott McCloud's books on Making Comics and Understanding Comics (I highly recommend them, by the way, if you can get your hands on them somehow) hint at this reality. Some people make art for art's sake, pushing the limits of the craft and of their abilities with fancy techniques and unique and novel styles and combinations. Some people make art to communicate a message more separate from their visual craft: an epic story, a series of jokes, a commentary on society. Some people are more lighthearted/rather not overthink it and just create because it's fun and it makes them feel good. There are definitely more ways than these to look at it.
I feel that the problem begins where more artists believe that the spirit and purpose their art is the ONE AND ONLY VALID ARTISTIC GOAL.
I think cultural and moral relativism (that no idea or practice is better or worse than another) has very weak philosophical grounding. But I also think this opposite extreme (that there's only one correct idea and it's the one I have), as it applies to us artists, works against us individually and as a community of artists.
What do you think? What do you draw/paint/create? And why? Have you personally seen people belittle specific artforms?
Am I even framing this reasonably or do art schools teach a more refined and thorough art philosophy that can make the general artistic public get along with their peers?
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