Community Inspiration

When I went to my first-ever (mandatory) Art Club meeting after classes on Monday, we were invited to offer ideas to the chairs of the club about what our expectations for Art Club were. Pretty much unanimously they included the formation of an artistic community, in which ideas and feedback are freely exchanged and visiting other sites throughout the Twin Cities to expand our artistic experiences. The second was definitely what I was hoping for, but I wasn’t really expecting. And the first one led to the decision that our next bi-weekly meeting would include the sort of feedback panel and we were all encouraged to bring some art to talk about.

AND HOLY CRAP TALK ABOUT AWESOME PRESSURE. o_o; I mean clearly my art is typically self-serving, and inconsequential at best (excluding some of the pieces I did when I was younger that were ideological…but I guess those were still self-serving), and I haven’t known where to go with my art for a long time. I was first planning on just bringing random sketches I work on and being like “my subject matter is so limited…how do I expand?” but naturally as soon as I posed that question to myself, I started to answer it. I was watching “Treasure Planet” today closely enough to really pay attention to the scenery and character design. Then, after spending like an hour trying to find a decent screenshot big enough for a background and running into a million badly done pieces of fanart in the process, I wondered if it might be worth trying to do my own fanart. I’ve done sketches of Jim before because the dynamism of his character is combined with fiercely expressive looks, and he also reminds me of Myoku. But I mean I wanted to do something worthwhile if I was going to do fanart, not some crappy shoddy piece of work. Then I realized that, if I’m going to venture into the realm of developing a piece of fanart, I probably shouldn’t make it be “Treasure Planet” – it’d have to be “Spirited Away”. That movie, and Miyazaki’s work (especially the way he’s streamlined Japanese animation and added a lot more dignity to the otherwise embarrassing array of anime series), have had far too big an impact on me to be won over by a movie that I forget about for long stretches of time.

It wasn’t hard to pick a scene with good enough imagery for me to work on. I also didn’t want to just do an ink/colored pencil drawing…I didn’t think that’d do Miyazaki justice. So I ventured into the realm of watercolor, because “Spirited Away” sort of has that quality to it anyway. But let me preclude this by saying that I have absolutely no skill or experience with watercolor. Oddly enough I didn’t let that stop me from really trying on this (usually it would have). I don’t know how this would contribute to the overall direction of my art, but it’s certainly reminded me that I can, to some rudimentary degree, accomplish what I set my mind to.

*CLICK ON IT*I’m disappointed at how much better the inked part looks, because it shows how much I rely on line in my traditional stuff. xD Of the water/sky on the left portion of the picture, the train is my favorite part. The yellow worked with my intentions much better than any other color on this did, I think. And I really like the planes of the balcony; I think it’s structured enough to offset the big open space on the left.