Revitalize: An Update

Despite my complete and utter disbelief at the speedy passage of time, it is now June. Month 6. Which means we’re at the halfway point of Sarah 2018 Draw-A-Palooza. Which means I feel more obligated than I usually do to make a blog post.

But it’s awkward, because I haven’t posted in like 2 months.

Soooooo…here we are.

This project.

Let me just preface this by assuring you that I haven’t stopped drawing. Seriously. I haven’t. I have, however, slacked a bit in the do-it-nearly-every-day department.

Here’s the thing. I have to 1) work 2) cook 3) train for runs 4) write 5) draw 6) pet my cats (yes, plural, because Freya now has a sister we’ve basically all-but-signed-the-papers-for adopted) 7) interact with my fiance and 8) obsess over fictional characters. But see, drawing is in that list of daily 8 activites I HAVE to do. Well, okay, #8 isn’t a HAVE to but golly I cannot. Stop. Thinking. About. Them.

Basically, I have 8 necessary things and only 16 hours a day to do them (because sleep). Work takes 9 hours, so now we’re down to 7. Cooking takes at least 1:30, depending on how complicated the recipe is. That’s 5:30. If I gym (which I do at least 3 times a week), that’s at least an hour. 4:30. Cat time? 30 minutes. I love them, okay? They demand snuggles. I can’t refuse. 3 hours. Fiance time? 30 minutes. I love him, okay? He demands snuggles. I can’t refuse. 2:30 hours. Also I need to shower at some point & prepare for bed. 2 hours. ALSO I need to sit down and stare blankly at a wall or Bravo TV for a minute because decompression is good. 1:30hrs. If not less.

If I am not brain-dead after work, and if I eat leftovers, don’t go to the gym, and don’t touch the TV remote, I’m left with a solid 5 hours of creative time. Cool. But most days of the week I don’t have leftovers, and going to the gym makes me feel good and needs to happen if I want to keep running (which I do), and my brain hurts after working all day. So worst case scenario is that I only have 1:30 to be creative. Oh, also, I have friends. Sometimes I need to hang out with them, because I like them and I require socializing in order to be a fully-functioning human. Hanging out with friends automatically reduces my availability to 0 hours.

For a couple of months, drawing took a back seat to being a social person and running training and my various other needs. And I was…honestly okay with that. Sometimes you have to make priorities and I had to prioritize being a social person (because extrovert) and making sure I wouldn’t die while running 13.1 miles.

Proof that I didn’t die. My friend didn’t die, either!

But then May came ‘round, as it does, and I was in a fuege of creativity (fueled by my continuously Not Great coping skills during the month of deathiversaries). Coincidentally, out of nowhere, my obsession with Maggie Stiefvater’s the Raven Cycle reignited into a mother-trucking BONFIRE. For months prior, I’d had artistic visions of my two faves from that series, but hadn’t thought I had the materials nor skills to make them a reality. My practice and newfound desire to learn how to use the wacom tablet, however, suddenly sent me into a fanart spiral. I decided that ENOUGH was ENOUGH of keeping these ideas locked in my head to drive me nuts. If I could just EXORCISE these visions from my body, then maybe I can resume being a normal human able to function in society. My 1:30-5 hours worth of potential creative time was funneled into fan art in an attempt to just get it out and be done with it.

Spoiler alert: the opposite happened.

I spent HOURS completing this piece that had been torturing my imagination every time I heard this song (which was often because I like it). And then I finished it, put it online (because why the heck not), and then….it just….took off? 

For context: the most notes I had ever gotten on anything I’d ever posted to tumblr (or any social media, for that matter) was maybe, like, 10 notes. MAYBE.

This piece is at over 800. And it keeps getting more!!! What. In. The. Fresh. Hell. Is. This.  

So yeah. High on the fact that people actually responded to this piece and that this thing I spent so much time on WASN’T absolute garbage (thanks to that darn tablet….how was I so against it for so long????), I was suddenly full of inspiration. The problem? It was inspiration for The Raven Cycle and The Raven Cycle ONLY. So I followed it, and drew more things. Like this:

And I wish I had more to show for this obsession but these both took, like, over 20 hours each because I’m a perfectionist and slow and so really this doens’t seem like much BUT IT IS. 

Like, I broke down and bought Adobe Photoshop to do these drawings. THAT’S how intense this is (also ClipStudio Paint was hella glitchy and I wanted something more reliable, but still…)

Now I have 28732702 other ideas, but have 0% inspiration for anything else. And because I’m spending hours of time on these pieces, it’s draining my creativity to be able to do other things. Like redrawing (that project is not forgotten. Trust me, the guilt I feel for not working on it is way more than it should be.)

So I am still drawing. It’s just mostly exclusively tablet-drawing fanart.

OH I did do some drawings for the summer camp at which I used to work. They needed coloring pages, and since digital art lends itself super well to line art drawings, I happily obliged.

I now see that those circles are different sizes and widths……that’s embarrassing.

Anyways. TL;DR: life and fan art swallowed me (and the wacom tablet) whole, so that’s where I’ve been for the past few months.

I will say, though, that my obsession is taking a chill pill (I can FEEL it happening), and I have until September before the next half marathon, AND all of my friends are 4th year vet students so they’re all in clinics now which means I have no social life when they’re gone/busy (which is most of the time)….so hopefully I can pull myself out of this fandom/life quicksand and get back to redrawing.

In the meantime, I’m pushing myself to 1) do a 6-month check in, 2) finally do a sketchbook C wrap up, 3) scan in the collection of loose drawings I found in my childhood bookshelf, 4) start drawing other things on the tablet, and 5) keep practicing outside of this fanart craze I’ve been suckered back into.

Fingers crossed I’ll be back this weekend with some progress.

A Mediocre Artist Gets On Social Media

My beautiful cat is not mediocre nor an artist. Simply a cat. Possibly a witch. To be determined. She is the featured photo because she’s a model. 

So like, I’m scrolling through Instagram, y’know, typically morning activity because it’s 2018 and I’m a slave to the social media machine like everyone else on this planet, and I see this post. It’s from an artist, @LiseSilva, and it’s an abridged version of this guide she just put online: “Let’s Talk About Ethical Creating/Making/Crafting”. She’s a fiber artist (power to her…I am absolutely incompetent with all things fiber), so this guide is approaching the topic from that perspective, but is written in such a way that her ideas are meant to be expanded into all creative forms.

I’m curious, so I read it. And 90% of her points I am in full support of. Like, please don’t steal others’ work, and please give credit where credit is due, and learn specific and culturally relevant art forms from people within those groups (such as a specific type of Native American loom work), and yes mimicry is a way to learn but don’t play that off as your own style and work. Cool cool cool, all good points. But then there was this other 10%. And it just…..eugh, it made me feel kinda icky inside. Like, DIY projects aren’t “true creative pursuit”, and if your work isn’t adding to the public conversation, innovating, deeply personal, fulfilling a need, etc then maybe you should keep it to yourself or gift it. Basically it was 10% of policing what should and shouldn’t be posted, as well as setting boundaries for what creativity is.

Whether intended or not, I felt as if this piece supported gate-keeping in the online art community. The questions we’re asked to ponder (“are you innovating the medium? Fulfilling a need or niche? Adding something new to the conversation?” etc etc) suggest that there’s some undefined, amorphous threshold you need to cross before your work should be shared. That your work needs to be “good enough” in order to be worthy.

Suggesting that your work must contribute to the conversation in order to be appropriate for posting is….thinking about art in academic terms. That phraseology–”contributing to the conversation”–is how we spoke in my Master’s program. Your ideas must contribute to the discourse of such-and-such text and/or field of study in a way that is new and original. Cool. But that’s a rule for upper-level academics who are basing their livelihoods on good and groundbreaking thought. This idea, in its context of this PDF, to me doesn’t seem like it takes into account the different reasons people do art. It assumes that all those who are posting online are doing so because they want to make this their life.

Because it doesn’t differentiate, it assumes that ALL work posted needs to conform to a particular standard. In my understanding of Lise’s notes, my work needs to beyond a certain threshold of “goodness” or “worthiness” in order to be worth posting. But like, why though? Why do I have to subscribe to a particular standard of skill (which is entirely subjective, arbitrary, and, while vaguely gestured at frequently in the PDF, isn’t defined in any helpful way) in order to be worthy of taking up space on Instagram or WordPress?

Look, I’m halfway decent at this whole drawing thing…but I’m not good. Not good by the standards of comparison, anyway. And while I feel like this piece isn’t telling me, per say, to GTFO, it is sort of gesturing in that direction.

Someone did push back on this in the comments on Insta, to which the author responded that “One could argue that the very act of posting work online is elitist in that in doing so you believe it is something that other people should see, and so, you should take greater care what you expose other people to,” and followed up with relating social media access as a whole as an elitist platform because of its limited accessibility. She’s not wrong about that last point; internet access and the tools with which to use it are markers of economic privilege. I do think that this is a deflection, however. Suggesting that all who post art online are elitist because they are posting online is a way of saying “well we’re all elitist anyways so you should at least be worthy of being elitist.”  Aka…not really addressing the critique at all. Soooo since I’m not good I just shouldn’t post?? I should protect the art world from my terrible skillz by slinking back into my cave and not contributing until my work is “good” enough????

Maybe we just have fundamentally opposed views of what you “should” do as a growing artist (she said she’s not telling anyone what to do and that these are all suggestions….but saying you “should” do something sure does seem like you’re telling me how I should be art-ing…) She believes you should learn silently and privately for the first year of your craft, so you can find your individual voice. 1) I think that’s an oddly specific timeframe, and 2) I don’t agree with that. I think showing your progression, and having honest conversations about success and failures relative to your personal journey is something the online art community SERIOUSLY lacks, to its detriment. As a culture based on comparison, how painful is it to go online and see ONLY the best, ONLY the successes, ONLY those people who are so extraordinarily good that you look at your own work after having your timeline inundated with these experts and think “Wow. I suck.” And I think that gatekeeping the art conversation by saying that you should only participate if you have worthy thought creates an exclusive community which will deflate hobby artists, learning artists, passionate artist if not career artists far more than it will encourage them.

I think all parts of the artistic, creative process are important, valuable, and worthy of being shown. Mess-ups, scrapped drafts, poor sketches, early successes, halfway-finished-but-for-some-reason-stopped pieces….I think the idea that there’s an arbitrary marker of “good” which you need to pass before you “should” start posting suggests that there isn’t anything worthy seeing or discussing prior to that marker. And I don’t think that’s true. At all. CLEARLY, because here I am posting mediocre drawings that are redraws of shitty drawings. And I don’t give a fudge about it.

In order for the art community to be full, vibrant, and inclusive (as I believe art should be), it needs to respect all parts of the process. It needs to come alongside growing artists, supporting them wherever they’re at, and be as open and honest about our mistakes and failures as we celebrate and support finished drawings & successes. “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” or whatever. All that shiz.

So anyways. I’m gonna keep posting my stuff. The great thing about social media is that if you disagree with my perspective on the community, if my mediocre artwork offends you, if you think I shouldn’t be posting because I’m taking up space that only experts deserve, then just….don’t follow me??? Don’t read the blog?????? Don’t follow my insta?????????? I mean, you’ll miss out on my scathing self-deprecation and hilariously bad drawings and the heart-warming feelings of seeing me improve, but like….if that doesn’t interest you then that’s fine!! Really, none of this matters we all die someday and we are but specks in the great vast nothingness of the universe…so follow whatever will make your time on this plane of existence worthwhile. And I’m gonna keep doing this because I’m enjoying it.

TL:DR…post your art whenever you want at any stage because life is short and people shouldn’t police you.

Don’t copy shiz, though. That’s just rude.  

Tablets Are Hard: Revitalize Week 22

I broke my rule.

Although, I guess I never really set rules for this thing. I’ve just been working under a set of undetermined, arbitrary guidelines because when only your mom and two friends (never the same two, mind you)* following a project you don’t really need to, like, transparently structure anything.

But I did what I didn’t think I would ever do, which is go backwards.

I assumed, when I started this, that once I finished a sketchbook I was done with it. Thus far, I haven’t moved on from a sketchbook because I’ve redrawn absolutely everything. More like, I no longer find any of the old drawings inspiring, so I move on to new things instead of forcing myself to draw something I’m not connecting with. Stupidly, I didn’t think what’s calling to me would change.

I was skimming through my files from Sketchbooks A & B, and, as true shocker to my naive self, was inspired to redraw a few of them. “But I can’t do that!!” I protested. “I finished Sketchbook A 2 years ago!!”

Well, of course I want to redraw different things now than I did. It’s been two years! Holy cow, it’s been two years…..

Anyways, so I was like, insistent that I couldn’t just go backwards in sketchbooks, that I was done with Sketchbook A and that was that. But if I make the rules, then why can’t I just…oh, I don’t know…change them? Or, just like…not follow them since I never really laid out rules to begin with.

The moral of the story is: I do what I want, and I make the rules. Or, lackthereof.

 

Knowing that the original is from Sketchbook A makes me far more impressed than I would be otherwise. This ain’t half bad. There’s perspective, some sense of proportion….detail in the kimono…all around a solid attempt. There’s no face, obviously….because faces are hard. It wasn’t me trying to make something scary. I just…probably didn’t know what her face should look like and liked the drawing enough as-is that I was worried about screwing it up (not much has changed).

The redraw is alright. I don’t know. I was inspired to redraw this one, but then actually did the redraw and was like ehhhhh. I really didn’t want to do the stereotypical woman-in-a-kimono drawing. You know what I’m talking about: draped off the shoulder, cherry blossoms floating all over the place, porcelain doll face, etc, etc, etc. Nah. Didn’t want to do that. So I drew a static pose instead. And it’s…not great. Her hand is a hot mess. I also didn’t get the stiffness of the fabric right, so her boob looks way too saggy.

So it was already Not Great, and then I tried to color it.

I don’t know why I thought that would be a good idea. I’m not particularly great with colored pencils in even the best of circumstances. I guess I hoped that I could combat the not-greatness of the drawing with pretty colors. So I tried to color it in. Except….where I had sketched her legs beneath the skirt, despite being erased, left ruts in the page. So the colored pencil was going everywhere EXCEPT in the ruts, so it looked like the skirt was see-through. Then I tried to use a sharpie. That worked, except it bled through the back of the page (which I assumed was going to happen; had I liked the drawing on the back of the page I wouldn’t have even tried).

So now it’s both ugly and a mess. And I could have posted it like that, but I didn’t want to. The only way to fix it without having to start from scratch? The tablet.

AGES ago, Sharkboy bought a Wacom tablet. I tried using it when he first got it and, despite knowing better, I gave up almost immediately because it was so hard. But this time I didn’t care about the drawing enough to care if it got ruined, so MIGHT AS WELL.

I struggled for the first bit. Then, it started getting easier. Obviously. We all knew that would be the case. I’m just chronically impatient. So now that I’ve gotten over the first hump of the struggle bus, I’m more willing to keep practicing. Although I may wait until I get a new computer; my current laptop has one foot on a banana peel and the other in a grave, so installing any kind of new software would be a very bad idea.

The clothes turned out poorly enough that I didn’t feel anywhere remotely confident to do the hand/arm/face so….pretend that black & white is an Intentional Artistic Choice. I also went overboard with the flowers. And used a very stereotypical cherry blossom petal brush. AND the obi/obiage is not shaded well at all. Whatever. It’s not worse than it was so there’s that. 

NOW it’s time for the Sketchbook C wrap-up. That’ll be coming this weekend. Hopefully. Lord only knows; I have no sense of a schedule for this thing anymore.

See y’all.

 
*To the two friends reading this today: Hello! Thanks for reading!

Also, yes, Sharkboy doesn’t even read this. Apparently the sanctity of engagement doesn’t require him to support my attempt to be internet famous.

At least my mom reads it though. So there’s that (hi mom.)

Letdown: Revitalize Week 21

I was having a good drawing day. I swear I was. I did some sketching in the morning; then a 30 minute class in the afternoon during which I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience because my hands were moving EXACTLY how they needed to and drawing curves exactly right and like WHAT that has literally never happened to me in the history of my LIFE; and then did some warm-up sketches before doing the redraw. I even picked the pose out before starting the warm-up so I wouldn’t lose my flow. Like it was a GOOD. FRIGGIN. DAY.

And then, in the moment of truth…..I flubbed.

Okay, okay. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Perspective is important. Two years ago, this drawing would have been one of the best redraws I’d done. I would’ve been SO proud of this. Contextually, however…this is not my best. Which, you know, you’re not going to love every drawing you do. And I think, for me, it’s important that I don’t shy away from the times when my drawings aren’t good (at least, not good as compared to my body of work…..we’re not talking about the subjective and existential question of “IS THIS ART GOOD” or the “IS THIS GOOD AS COMPARED TO INSERT WELL-KNOWN ARTISTS NAME HERE” because I’m trying to not base my self-worth on comparison kthanks.) Disappointing drawings happen. That’s life. I’m embracing it. Or…side-hugging it….y’know, like how people do when they don’t really want to hug and/or are just really uncomfortable with human contact and/or are trapped in one-step-down-from-a-cult religious communities where sexuality is deemed the ultimate sin.

Anyways.

The body is fine, I think. The head might be too small? Or the legs & arms too long? Probably both. The hands are eh (hilarious because I was just bragging to myself about how hands were one of the big things I needed to work on during this project but now I’m so much better….until today). I mean I guess at least they’re better than the dandelion-petal-hand nonsense happening in the original. And the face was giving me all sorts of trouble. It’s crazy to me that I went through a phase of only ever drawing ¾ view faces, to the point where I didn’t know how to draw a face straight-on. And now, I have NO idea how to draw anything other than a straight-on face. Also, expressions as still causin’ me stress. I’ve been doing hand & feet specific drawing practice occasionally, and I do think those have really helped how I understand those shapes and proportions…. maybe I need to do one of those with faces. And by maybe I mean I definitely need to do that.

I gave her wings. Don’t know why. It just seemed right.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s humility. I guess I was getting a bit too confident, and I needed this reminder that perfection is an illusion and learning is a lifelong process.

I also got burning oil in my eye today, so really, the universe is hammering that lesson home hard.

In other news: Sketchbook C has reached its end. There are still more drawings in it, but I’ve wrung out the last of my inspiration. Don’t worry….I’ll still post those drawings just so we can all have a good laugh.

Look forward to a wrap-up post for Sketchbook C, and a new redraw this weekend. WHO KNOWS maybe I’ll actually stick to my self-imposed schedule (hahahahahhahahahahahahahaha probz not).

OH WAIT I (almost) FORGOT SOMETHING IMPORTANT:

Spooky Cat discovered the scanner today. Enjoy some Toe Beans.

So young and already an artistic prodigy.

^^^We call this one, “CatScan”

A fifth paw? Is this some kind of sign from above? Is she a mutant? Is this a metaphor for the necessity of community in order to support oneself in the trials and tribulations of life? Is this the complete and absolute meaning of the human experience we’ve been searching for since the dawn of man?!?!? NO ONE KNOWS. It’s a mystery art historians will ponder for centuries.

Anyways. I’ve got toe bean scans to submit to the MoMA. I’ll let you know when she’s famous.

See ya.

Gettin’ There: Revitalize Week 20

First: self-assessment. Then: art.

For those of you just joining, I committed to practicing art almost every day of 2018. I’ve been pretty good about maintaining that. I’m definitely drawing more than I ever have (except for when I was in middle school and was art-ing every day of the week), so that’s good. And I’m for sure improving.

It’s weird, because on one hand, I feel like I just started doing this; the past 3 months have just flown by. And it’s not like I’m sitting down and drawing for an hour every day. Some days it’s an hour, most it’s only 15mins. So I’m like “wow I’ve gotten so much better over such a short period of time without wasting my entire life!!!” But that’s not real, because it’s been 3 months of almost daily practice. That’s actually a lot of time. I’d bet if someone looked through my sketchbook, though, they wouldn’t think my progress was THAT substantial. But it feels substantial.

It’s so cool when you have “eureka” moments. Like, you’re drawing an arm from a reference picture and suddenly you’re like “oh. OH. THAT’S how that muscle goes.” With more drawing comes more eurekas. And I feel like all of those eurekas have culminated into jumps forward recently. I’m suddenly far more confident and proud of my sketches, my figure drawing skills looking far better and feeling far better. Even the process itself has felt better. Like, my hands have been catching the curves and bumps and movement of the body in the lines; I can conceptualize shapes better, and how they connect to each other; and I’m actually getting real good at drawing HANDS, which who thought that day would ever come? I DIDN’T. I dunno y’all, I just…I feel like my intuitive sense of the human body has become so much better. Does that sound weird? Probably. BUT WHATEVER. It’s how I feel.

IN OTHER NEWS: I discovered why arm muscles are so tricky for me to understand & draw. It’s because of RIKU.

Look at those arms!!!! Those muscles aren’t anatomically correct!!!! NO WONDER I’M A MESS. Gives me more reason to dislike him.

This realization brought to you by Sharkboy (my fiancé….who is not Taylor Lautner but is instead a regular man who happens to look like a shark) playing Kingdom Hearts and me watching/reciting all the lines because I’ve played it too many times.

Back to the important stuff.

I don’t have anything important to say about this drawing. It wasn’t a character—nether OC nor fanart—and didn’t have any backstory that I can remember. I just liked magic & superpowers so….this happened.

For real though, I am super proud of this redraw. I used a pose reference, but this is one of the first references where my drawing is nearly identical and that is SO COOL. And her face was a first-try success so like multiple thumbs up to that. OH also I discovered the marvel of sketching with a lighter pencil (HB) and then outlining in a dark pencil (3B) and WOW I have never felt so official. Like, that’s a real artist technique THAT I USED BY ACCIDENT and now I understand why they do it.

Shading continues to blow my mind. No one who does art is surprised by this but I still am.

Wrinkles on pants are hard. Also it looks like she’s wearing jeggings when I wanted her to be wearing jeans but like whatever 98% of my redraws are in dresses/skirts because that’s all I drew in middle school (which makes no sense because I H A T E D wearing skirts and dresses in real life).

Her feet are weird. I’m ignoring it.

The shirt says “The Future is Female” which is 1) I shirt I own, 2) the truth, and 3) seemed fitting for a powerful female human person.

So yeah. 3 months down. A lifetime to go. Love that I’ve sold my soul to these pencils. There’s only a hint of sarcasm there.

Sketchbook C is almost finished. I’ll do a rounding out post and then it’s onto the next one! More anime and embarrassment to come.

See you.

Believe It!: Revitalize Week 19

At last. The moment has arrived.

I’ve spent 19 weeks talking about anime & manga. Which, including the enormous break I took, is actually like 2 years. I’ve alluded to these elusive fanart drawings…not the self-insert ones, nor the OCs. I’m talking the far and few between true fanart. And now, your wait has finally paid off. For TODAY IS THE DAY.

Oh yes, my friends. You better believe it. Because this is Naruto fan art day.

I LOVED Naruto as a younger human. I started reading it in Shonen Jump, and, at the time, thought I had started way late in the story. HA. Jokes on me and literally everyone else because dear lord Naruto lasted for freaking ever. Like, for reference, I started in the Forest of Death during the Chunin Exam….which is in Volume 6…..out of 72…….yeah. So like, hilariously nowhere near the end. And of course I watched the anime with the horrendous dubbing and censorship. Not nearly as bad as the infamous WBKids One Piece censoring, but still pretty bad.

Here’s the thing with anime, though: unless the entire manga is already out, the anime will catch up. And when it does, anime has two options: diverge or stall. If you diverge, like Fullmetal Alchemist did, you create your own path separate of the anime storyline. If you stall, you write an excessive number of filler episodes to buy time until the manga gets far enough ahead that you can start up again.

Guess which Naruto did?

The anime became infamous for having an insane amount of filler episodes. We’re not talking like one or two or ten…..no…..we’re talking, like, 50 filler episodes while they waited for Part II (Naruto: Shippuden) to happen. And filler episodes suck. Objectively. Like, they’re not good. And these were REALLY not good.

I stuck with it for a long time. But I stopped my Shonen Jump subscription when I went to college, and I can’t remember when I stopped watching….at some point real early in the Shippuden era I think. It just took too long to get there, and by then my anime/manga phase was long gone & buried.

When the series FINALLY finished in, what, like 2015?? I was shocked. Like, honestly, I didn’t think it would end. It needed to, like, ten years ago, but that aside. Genuinely amazed. And then they come out with the Naruto’s kid or something sequel series? Not surprised, but also I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted and I don’t even follow the series anymore.

Anyways. Long story long: Naruto was a thing I liked. I wanted one of those ninja headbands (although the ones sold used fabric that was too thin so, with the metal band,  they always looked dumb). Sakura was cool because she had pink hair. Anyone vaguely interested in men (like myself) loved Sasuke because he was dark and gloomy and brooding and handsome (I guess??? I don’t know….my emo tastes in humans was…..not the same as my current tastes, let’s just say). Although, honestly, if I had to pick a Naruto man today: Shikamaru. For sure. OH or Kakashi. Either one. Both great looking….animated….dudes…………..this is weird okay we’re moving on.

Sakura. Again, cool because she had pink hair. This drawing actually isn’t awful! She has toes that are kind of toe-ish and her feet are trying to be in perspective. Also her bent arm has proper muscle/bone definition!! And her legs are more human thickness instead of stick-figure legs. See guys, I’m learning. Also her sleeves wrinkle a bit (GOOD) and her clothes stick out from her body as they should (including her collar, which looks good). Yeah. This is a fine drawing for 12 year-old me.

I feel like Sakura got jilted out of being as awesome as she could have been because she was trapped in this weird three-way romance thing happening (Naruto loved Sakura, Sakura loved Sasuke, Sasuke loved himself and avenging his family, Naruto and Sasuke fought like how Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy fought [so obvious sexual tension there that has spawned many a fanfic] etc etc ) and just wasn’t allowed to be as badass as she could have been. She had it in her! Like, hello, that time she cut her precious long hair to save the day?? I C O N I C.

Anyways. I always liked her. Always wanted more for her. Who knows, maybe she got it later in the series. But honestly, as long as Naruto and Sasuke were going at it, she was always just going to be the mediator and/or tossed to the side so the dudes could have their contests of macho manliness AKA ninja battle each other to the ends of the earth and back for no real reason other than #HONOR.

I’m actually not super embarrassed by that typography. Mainly because Tiny Sarah was trying to be cultured & culturally sensitive by spelling her name in Japanese. Is it right? Probably not. But I remember being really concerned about making sure I had the correct word, and that I was writing it properly with all the correct lines and strokes. I wanted it to be right, not just there.

I didn’t try to write in Japanese for this redraw. But I did redraw her to be cooler. I mean, she’s a ninja after all. She deserves better than a cute, coy pose. She deserves ACTION.

I couldn’t decide on a pose, and the first one (top right) didn’t take long at all, so I decided to just draw two. The bottom one was way more complicated anyways, so it gave me good practice. And then I could do both long hair young Sakura and short hair older Sakura.

I’m really proud of the waves on the back panel of the top Sakura’s outfit. Such a strange thing to be proud of but here we are.

Bottom Sakura’s face was a pain. It’s that slight-angle down that was killing me. But eventually, with sheer dumb luck, I got it. Praise.

So. You’ve all gotten what you came for: manga fanart. I’ve kept my promise. Now you can leave. JUST KIDDING.

See ya later!

Bow Down, Witches: Revitalize Week 18

“Double, double, toil & trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
~Macbeth 4.1.10-11~

So I like witches. A lot. Example: the only season of American Horror Story I watched was Coven. Because I hate scary things but witches? Totally chill.

The Sims Makin’ Magic was always my favorite. No matter Sims 1, 2, 47, 394…the inevitable magic-themed expansion pack was always the best.

Harry Potter? Of course. Big Pumpkin? You betcha. Which Witch? Loved it. Sabrina? Watched both the animated and the live action AND read the comic. Kiki’s Delivery Service? Witches in anime, so obviously yes. W.I.T.C.H (debatably about fairies/guardians/undefined magical beings but whatever I’m counting it)? It’s Italian-made manga, I mean, c’mon. Buffy? Clearly. Halloweentown 1, 2, and 3 (the 4th one is irredeemable garbage don’t @ me)? Annual viewings are necessary. Stardust? Heck yes Tristan Thorn. Blair Witch Project? No. That shiz is horrifying. I’m only here for a good time.

Moral of the story: witches are freaking great and I want to be one. I have a black cat and my car’s name is Hecate, for goodness sakes, like…I mean…if anyone deserves to have some magic, it’s me. In an alternate universe where magic is real, I probably am one. I dream of being that woman in the creepy house on the corner with a wrought iron fence and lots of ivy and sprawling flowerbeds who all the kids think might be scary and mean and full of magic but who actually just likes her gardens to be a little overgrown, and who has a resting mean face despite her big heart, and who’s pies aren’t quite magical but might as well be, and who gives out the best Halloween candy just so she can compliment all the small children on their costumes and pretend they’re who they’re dressed up to be.

So I drew (still draw?) a lot of witches. Some of them were Harry Potter inspired, many were not. These two are the latter:

 

Eh. Not bad. Not great. At least, Tanya isn’t bad. Her hands have some perspective and her legs look more like legs than Dara’s do. Dara is a mess. Notice how the feet are in the same position for both? Yeah, for a while that was the only way I knew how to draw legs. Living my artistic life with the “if it ain’t broke” mentality (which seems very counter-intuitive for an artist??? Hence why I’m not one).

Clearly anime influence (and in more than just the eyes & features…Dara’s outfit is a generic anime school uniform). Tanya is vaguely relevant to 2018 in that I recently watched I, Tonya but that’s quite a stretch, honestly. Not even sure why I bothered mentioning it now that I’ve said it aloud and realized how goofy a connection that is.

OH wanna hear something hilarious? “Dara the Young Witch”??? Okay so these were Yu-Gi-Oh Card Character designs. I wish I was joking. I have pages upon pages of them. I’m pretty sure my vision for this card was a 3-card set that would “evolve” this character until her ultimate form, and you had to have all three life stages (child, teenager, and master) in order to unlock the ultimate sorceress. Yeah, I may or may not have play-acted in my basement me dueling and using this made-up card……

Anyways. A deeper thought: now that I’m reflecting on these original character designs (and especially these Yu-Gi-Oh cards), I’m realizing that they’re all women. And they’re all women because, like with most pop culture things, Yu-Gi-Oh didn’t have women in it. It had, like, one steady female character (among like 290204978029 men), and most of the cards (at least the ones always appearing in the show) were men: Dark Magician, Exodia, Obelisk, Jinzo…even the dragons always felt…male. Clearly, as a female viewer (not player. I couldn’t win a game of Yu-Gi-Oh if I played against a potato and a rock) I was missing…well…women. I wanted there to be people like me in the show.

Enough about Yu-Gi-Oh. BACK TO THE WITCHES.

 

Me & My Familiar (messy apartment intentionally cropped)

Crafting counts as art

I decided to do this particular 2-into-1 redraw after attending a Kentucky Derby-themed event in which I once again threw off the shackles of conformity and went full Coven Sorceress-of-the-South instead of Lilly Pulitzer’s next spokeswoman. Bravo should be knocking on my doorstep any day now with a contract in hand for Southern Charm. Cameron does love witchcraft.

Anyways. Long story long, I was in a witchy mood. Might as well have made an event out of it.

It’s Britney, Witch

“Does that look like Sarah? That totally looks like Sarah.” You betcha, my friend. Total self-insertion. But here’s the thing: my outfit for that event was darn good. And my hat–which I made–was great. All it took was a hot glue gun and an embarrassing amount of time and money wasted in Michael’s.

I didn’t want this supreme outfit (ha, see what I did there?) to be worn once and lost to the sands of time. No. This needed to be memorialized.

Used a pose reference, sort of. Like, I started off with it, but made some decent edits to it along the way just because it wasn’t looking like how I imagined. It’s still not quite there, but whatever I’m over it.

Sharkboy’s sharp eye had to help me catch an issue with the arm again this week. Don’t know what I’d do without him. Probably suck at drawing a whole lot more.

I sat down to add flowers to her hat, and ended up doing that for about 3 seconds before feeling compelled to fix her entire face. Definitely seeing the fruits of my drawing-practice labor in how I’m starting to shade/shape/work faces. And everywhere else for that matter. Proportions and perspective are still hard, but I can tell that I’m actually getting better and more confident in straying from the reference photo to do what I think looks best.

Cool. Well. That’s all. Stay spooky, my friends. See you next week.

No Good Title: Revitalize Week 17

I’ve spent hours trying to think of a snappy introduction (and title for that matter), and I’ve got nothing. So.

I’m thinking this was inspired by Disney’s Atlantis, but I have no memory of seeing it when I was this young. I very well may have, because when I watched it as a college student I knew what was going to happen and who the characters were and all that jazz. But I can’t say for sure. Regardless, this person looks like she was inspired by that movie (but whitewashed because I’m problematic).

This is one of those drawings that was surprisingly good. Like, okay, her proportions aren’t great, but they’re far better than other examples in this sketchbook. Like her breasts! They’re round and not, like, overdrawn! She has a belly button! And a nose! Hair that looks kinda like hair! And that book she’s holding!! Look at Baby Sarah learning how to draw perspective!! (I feel like I need to support Baby Sarah after last week’s blog post, because my mom sent be a text telling me to stop being mean to her [hi mom……]).

So I was struggling with this redraw. When I first sketched out the pose, I drew it too big and it didn’t fit the sketchbook page (hilarious given that, as we’ll see in the old sketchbooks, I used to draw things super-duper tiny and couldn’t draw full-page things to save my life). I re-positioned and redrew her left (our right) arm like 20 times until I was happy with it. You can see the smudges where all 174691512 variations of her arm didn’t quite erase. I struggled with her face shape and features and expression. I got it to a point where I was okay with it. Then I went to dinner and came back and was like “this is Not Good”. I was going to just accept it and post it anyways, but it bugged me too much and I started to fix her hand and then I just went through and fixed everything else too.

Long story long, it ended up being pretty good. Not my best, but definitely far from my worst. Still whitewashed, though. I tried to give her a less-tribal vibe because, y’know…”tribal” is not an appropriate theme for any white person.

The major success of this redraw was her left hand. I DREW THAT FORESHORTENED HAND ALL BY MYSELF, NO REFERENCE PICTURE. #ProudOfMe

Her crown was inspired by Beyoncé’s. Important.

It was also really important that I properly draw a fat body. The art world (the comic world/anime world, specifically, aka where I learned how to draw) is just as discriminatory towards bodies above size 2 as fashion/TV/movies/books/etc are. I’ve never tried to draw anything other than skinny people. And you can’t just ADD random bulges to a skinny body. You have to make sure the fat moves properly and falls with gravity and folds in a way that makes sense and is in the right places. I used more references for that than I did for the pose, because I wanted it to be right. I’m sure it’s not perfect, because my sense of anatomy isn’t perfect, and fat is anatomy. It’s something I need to work on.

Anyways. Don’t have much else to saaaaay. This wasn’t a very funny pooooost. I’m feeling guilty that it wasn’t entertaining but at least it was shooort?????

Ending the awkward and signing off for now.

See ya!

Own It: Revitalize Week 16

You know, it’s a good thing I’m not internet-famous yet, because apparently keeping to a schedule is just not a thing I can do.

I’m not gonna even preface this original drawing because it’s a doozy.
I mean. I just. I don’t have words. No words for my younger self. Except to, maybe, not.

I’m really not that embarrassed by most of the drawings in these sketchbooks. Honestly. Like, they’re silly and a testament to who I was in all my weirdness, and yeah that’s a little embarrassing (especially since I’m so incredibly different now [still weird, just fyi, but a different kind of odd]), but like whatever. It’s the drawings that have writing on them that tend to just…..feel humiliating. Like this one.

I did a series of “wow I’m so deep look at me making deep phrases” drawings. This is one of them and maybe the least embarrassing? Which is saying something because Y I K E S.

What are the others, you ask? Are they really that bad, you wonder? I came her solely to see you embarrassed and so far you have not delivered enough humiliating blackmail-worthy content, you complain. Let us see you suffer, you demand!

I opened this can of worms, so I guess I need to own it.

Yep. There they are.

Trying to own it. Trying very, very hard to own it proudly. Or, at least, own it without melting into the earth from shame. Lisa Rinna, give me strength.

Originally, I did one drawing (I’m getting to it, don’t worry…enjoy the terrible originals for a little longer). Because I wasn’t thinking about showing all of the originals in this post. That spark of inspiration only just occurred. Now, since I decided to just show all the  Y I K E S drawings now literally as I was typing this post (rip the band-aid off, per say), I feel like I should redraw another. Aaaaaaand I’ve decided to do so. Just so we’re clear, though, I did in fact draw & write half a blog post for last weekend, but now I’ve decided mid-week to add another redraw, so it’s being published as a double-whammy for this weekend.

TL;DR I did one drawing on time and one drawing early so therefore no one can be mad at me. Including myself.  

I’m trying to not draw dead people (which is difficult given that Baby Sarah had A Thing for darkness & death), so that leaves only two possibilities.

Gonna be honest, I think these turned out pretty darn well. The one dress should have been all black but I was tired and it was so much work to shade and the post-its on the other side of the page were creating weird impressions in the shading soooooo…..

I used a pose reference for the right one, but did not for the left. I used to never use pose references, but now that I do it’s almost like training wheels. I know reference poses are not a sign of poor skill, because I know plenty of big-time fancy pants artists use them. But being able to draw without them feels like a hurdle to cross. And I’m not very good at hurdles.

Honestly, the only reason I didn’t use a reference is because I couldn’t find a good one. After combing through Google for ages, I just gave up and decided to take the plunge and try it on my own. Like taking the training wheels off a bike, the first go-round of planning it out was scary. But eventually I got there. Thank GOD she has a tail, because if I had to deal with legs…..it probably would not have ended well.

I gotta say, practicing figure drawing on the regular sure has helped. Like, “no duh”. I know. But really, being able to free-hand that mermaid and have it look THAT decent is an accomplishment. There were definitely some struggles; I had to pull in Sharkboy’s help a few times to be an extra set of eyes. I have no idea how people can possibly create art completely divorced from other humans. There are so many times I can tell something is wrong but can’t pinpoint what and he comes to the rescue.

The original sketch

The final

See the difference? I never would have figured out that her shoulder was too high. But once Sharkboy suggested it, I covered up the one half of her body, and then the other half. Sure enough, both sides looked good, but together looked like an awkward mash-up of two different poses. 

Her face isn’t detailed. I’m okay with it. I drew it real quick and it looked great and I was like “nope not touching it again” because I knew if I messed with it it would turn ugly because that’s what ALWAYS happens.

For the second drawing, I’m actually really impressed with how good her hands turned out. Like, even the foreshortened arm & hand look REAL good. I did use a reference because (as seen in the original, not using one is a disaster). Honestly, I was a bit salty she had to wear a dress because her legs and feet turned out nicely, too. “But Sarah you’re the creator you could’ve changed it,” yeah, okay, I know that. But I didn’t want to change it because I was aiming for a redraw instead of an “inspired by”. Let me live with my self-induced disappointments and complaints, tysm.

I didn’t redraw the dumb phrases and the bad typography. I’m fine with burying that 20-feet-under where it’ll never see the light of day again. Because….ugh….I’m an embarrassment.

With that lovely note, I’ll be back next weekend with something less hilariously terrible. Until then, enjoy a good laugh at my expense. I encourage it, even.

Sorority Squat: Revitalize Week 15

So I used a scanner instead of my phone to upload the image. Baby steps, my friends, baby steps.

My cat loves the printer/scanner. And by “loves” I mean she stares at it for hours after we print one document, trying to stick her paw into the machine while knocking everything off the desk because she is not-so-smol anymore and our printer was not placed catty-corner with the understanding that our kitten would want to play with it.

As I type this, she is sitting on my mouse, staring at the paper tray. The mere “beep” of the machine turning on is enough to intoxicate her. We didn’t even print anything. I was just scanning. Yet here she sits. On my mouse. Very much in the way.

Little Sarah is trying very very hard to make dynamic pictures. Two people, up-close (which is abnormal for her…we’re gonna get into the itty-bitty drawing phase very soon and you’ll see what I mean), doing more than just standing (I learned how to draw one pose and only drew that one pose for quite a while). I’m just still in the phase where all my arms are sticks and my heads are circles with pointy anime chins and the boobs are up way too high and my hands are………………well, honestly, the hands I draw nowadays aren’t much better. These have fingernails, though. Little Sarah is attending to details, even if her sense of human proportions is way outta wack.

The redraw:

I feel like I should clarify something about this project. Not like anyone has questioned me? But just in case they do. Technically, not every redraw is a redraw. In some cases, I do try to stay close to the original, only making small changes to the pose, clothing, etc. But the reality is most of these drawings are really, really bad. And there’s not a ton to work with in some of them (like the ones for today). Instead of trying to redraw these girls as-is, I took the pose and the emotion behind it and use that as inspiration: two girls having a good time. Done.

These are current OCs of mine for a secondary story idea marinating in my head. I’ve had this story idea for a long while now, probably since early college? I can’t exactly remember. But it’s on the backburner while I work on my primary series (which has also been floating around in my head for years…over a decade, even). It’s a female-focused sci-fi action story involving fighting and motorcycles and fun hair. These are 2 out of 3 main characters: Brynn (redhead) and Tieranny (rainbow hair). Mercury is….somewhere else. Honestly, they’re probably laughing about her. She’s easy to make fun of. It’s all out of love, though. These three girls are basically sisters; they tease each other all the time.  

Drawing people laughing/smiling/emoting in profile is freakin’ TOUGH, man. I struggled so hard. You can sorta see where I drew/erased/redrew/erased/redrew/erased/redrew/ erased/redrew…paused…erased/redrew/erased/erased/ERASED/redrew/screamed/erased/redrew Brynn’s mouth. I spent probably about an hour on just that little .5in section. Dear Lord.

No joke, when looking up poses for this I googled “sorority girls”, because “sisters” and “friends” brought up too many cheesy stock photos and I wanted something REAL. Hilariously the best reference photo I found was ZTA women (my sorority). #Meant2Be #Not4YearsBut4Life or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, aside from the pain-in-my-ass mouth situation this isn’t too shabby. While I have a vague sense of what Brynn/Tier/Merc will look like (I got their hairstyles figured out, at least), I don’t know refining details yet, which makes this drawing a little odd for me. I know what they don’t look like (aka this), but I don’t know what they do look like, y’know? So I can’t really draw what I don’t know.

I do have files on my computer filled with faces for them (like I have for most of my main characters in series). That sentence sounds really creepy now that I’m reading it back….but it’s true.

I’ll be back this weekend with another redraw! Tryna get back on some kind of schedule.