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#344 - Anything you can do I can do better...though maybe not by much.
I find myself utterly baffled that nearly all of the American-based "how-to" anime style artbooks feature some of the most generic, boring, or just plain bad anime-styled art out there. Manga Madness by David Okum is the most recent one I saw, on the shelves at Michaels while I was looking for other stuff for my ART113 project. Christopher Hart's stuff is slightly better, and this chick's work is generally competent, but this is just horrendous, totally amateur. I just...what? What?
I have a couple different reactions to being confronted with this sort of mediocrity:
1) Shame. I feel ashamed that my primary drawing talent lies in the animanga style. What makes this even worse is that sometimes I don't even think I have any ground to stand on when I talk about how crappy some of this art is. After all, what's special about my art? Not much, really, at the moment. It's generic animanga, albeit depicting characters from small-ish fandoms and occasionally a couple of OCs. I'm not such a hot-shot. [/ blatant breakage of Ebert's Law; I plead guilty by way of low self-esteem and a generally pessimistic nature]
On a bad day, Shame eventually gives way to...
2. Despair. Again, I have no reason to think that I'm any better than this mediocrity that gets published. I should just stop drawing right now, because I have no hope whatsoever of getting better because I can never focus on a single pursuit more than a few months at a time, and therefore I'll never improve. Real True Artists draw from life, or are super-realistic, or have an uber-distinctive trademark style that absolutely makes them stand out from the crowd and you absolutely cannot mistake their art for anyone else's, or they're heavily conceptual and convey lofty Universal Messages and are Slick and Edgy. Et cetera, ad nauseam, rinse, lather, and repeat.
On a good day, Shame eventually gives way to...
2) Defiance. Fuck that shit; I can draw so much better than that! I'm gonna be one of the best damn American-based animanga artists out there, yessiree, no doubts about that, fo shizzle mah nizzle. I'll practice my anatomy and learn how to draw normal people (instead of just good-looking ones) and awesomely detailed backgrounds (instead of abstract, potentially impressionist swathes of color) and figure out how to color oh-so-prettily and the whole fuckin' nine yards!AND EVERYONE WILL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME AND RECOGNIZE THEIR QUEEN
Right now, I'm currently having a Pretty Bad Day, possibly because I haven't extensively drawn in a while and so my skills are seriously out of whack. Lately I've been heavily focused on writing and music, and I've been struggling - as I have been for the past few years and as I probably will be for the rest of my life - with how to balance out a journey of improvement in three different artistic skillsets, none of which I'm willing to give up. Is there a way I can satisfactorily balance this? Or do I just have to put up and shut up and learn to prioritize one over the other? No real answers, yet.
I have a couple different reactions to being confronted with this sort of mediocrity:
1) Shame. I feel ashamed that my primary drawing talent lies in the animanga style. What makes this even worse is that sometimes I don't even think I have any ground to stand on when I talk about how crappy some of this art is. After all, what's special about my art? Not much, really, at the moment. It's generic animanga, albeit depicting characters from small-ish fandoms and occasionally a couple of OCs. I'm not such a hot-shot. [/ blatant breakage of Ebert's Law; I plead guilty by way of low self-esteem and a generally pessimistic nature]
On a bad day, Shame eventually gives way to...
2. Despair. Again, I have no reason to think that I'm any better than this mediocrity that gets published. I should just stop drawing right now, because I have no hope whatsoever of getting better because I can never focus on a single pursuit more than a few months at a time, and therefore I'll never improve. Real True Artists draw from life, or are super-realistic, or have an uber-distinctive trademark style that absolutely makes them stand out from the crowd and you absolutely cannot mistake their art for anyone else's, or they're heavily conceptual and convey lofty Universal Messages and are Slick and Edgy. Et cetera, ad nauseam, rinse, lather, and repeat.
On a good day, Shame eventually gives way to...
2) Defiance. Fuck that shit; I can draw so much better than that! I'm gonna be one of the best damn American-based animanga artists out there, yessiree, no doubts about that, fo shizzle mah nizzle. I'll practice my anatomy and learn how to draw normal people (instead of just good-looking ones) and awesomely detailed backgrounds (instead of abstract, potentially impressionist swathes of color) and figure out how to color oh-so-prettily and the whole fuckin' nine yards!
Right now, I'm currently having a Pretty Bad Day, possibly because I haven't extensively drawn in a while and so my skills are seriously out of whack. Lately I've been heavily focused on writing and music, and I've been struggling - as I have been for the past few years and as I probably will be for the rest of my life - with how to balance out a journey of improvement in three different artistic skillsets, none of which I'm willing to give up. Is there a way I can satisfactorily balance this? Or do I just have to put up and shut up and learn to prioritize one over the other? No real answers, yet.
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