We're almost at the end of 2015 so 'tis the season for looking back to see how far you've come. Like every year since the day I was born I have not accomplished anything of significance this year either, but I figured I'd have nothing else interesting to write about otherwise so I thought it'd be fun to take a leaf out of those end-of-year art summary things. Even if I'll end up regretting this blog entry, that is. It's always rather embarrassing to look at old works, after all!
The Art Summary template I used above was from dustbunnythumper on DeviantArt. Fill out your own too and see how you've grown this year!
For the past few years before I went back to drawing traditionally, I've mostly been drawing silly doodles and staying on the tokusatsu side of things. I feel like this year I haven't drawn as much of these silly doodles as I thought I should have, but there still seems to be enough lying around in my folders to do this thing!
I enjoy drawing silly crossovers and references so a lot of the doodles I make probably only make sense to people who are familiar with the actors' other activities. Quite a number of actors in tokusatsu shows have come from 2.5D productions and many of those who were in different seasons end up working together or have already worked together in other shows.
For example, Ogoe Yuuki and Takigawa Eiji worked together as Ramon and Riki in Kamen Rider Kiva in 2008. Takigawa was in the first generation cast of the Prince of Tennis musicals in 2003 while Ogoe took on the lead role in the same musical in 2011. It's connections like this that fuel my really stupid jokes, so as you can see, my art is not something I can proudly show off to people in real life!
Around my birthday, Tawada Hideya made his tokusatsu debut in Shuriken Sentai Ninninger as Takigawa Kinji. Ask any of my fandom friends and they will tell you that I do not like him at all. Not one bit. Absolutely definitely not. I do not like him so much that I don't even own Kinji's stupid burger phone!
By the way, Tawada was in Tenimyu with Ogoe, which is mostly why three out of four drawings on here are of Kinji and Ramon!
It was May this year when I was suddenly inspired by artsy online friends to take up traditional art once again. It's been a long while since I seriously dabbled in this hobby--I was still in high school then, and my weapon of choice were colour pencils. This time around I started with Crayola markers.
They were actually really interesting to work with! I learned that it's possible to use them as a sort of watercolour alternative. The method wasn't good for the paper at all, especially the one I started with, but it worked out for me and I had a lot of fun with them. I plan on doing something with this method again, perhaps even try to record the process and put the video up somewhere. Maybe I'll make that a project for next year!
Eventually I started to feel dissatisfied and limited by the Crayola markers. Since they weren't actual watercolour and they weren't fancy alcohol based markers like Copics or Promarkers, their blending capabilities were next to nonexistent and I couldn't replicate a lot of the watercolour or marker effects I was hoping to achieve. I wanted to move up a little so I finally took the leap and began to use watercolours. Markers were out of the question because they're too expensive and also not readily available where I live, which is both a blessing and a curse, I suppose.
Luckily for me, some of my really old Sakura Mat tubes from elementary school art class survived, albeit completely dried up. They served me well enough during my experimentation phase, although when I think about it, I guess I'll never actually stop experimenting. There's always something new to learn about any art medium and watercolours are no exception!
By July, I suddenly got super into Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle so I drew quite a lot of silly doodles then and that continued until the next month when there was this week long fanwork festival of sorts centering on one of the characters in the series. Maybe this was when I burnt myself out, drawing a lot more digitally and traditionally than I usually do!
October was when I tried to work mainly with pens because of Inktober, which I've already written about here. It was a difficult challenge, but I think I learned a few things from it! Although I'm not sure if I improved my inking or any of my skills at all, I actually find myself looking forward to doing it again next year.
These days I've been drawing silly doodles again and haven't drawn much traditionally. I've also been having fun playing with screentone brushes on SAI and shoujo manga effects! Drawing comics is obviously not my forte and it's not getting much attention (people tend to prefer my silly doodles over my "serious" art in general), but it's fun so I guess I'll keep doing it while there's inspiration.
It's only the beginning of December, though, so there's still time to draw more things.
Have I improved this year? Probably not. I learned stuff, tried out different papers and paint and pens and brushes, experimented with different techniques, and yet I don't think I'm anywhere near improvement. There's always someone better, always someone to try to catch up to. But I think that's part of the fun in all art forms: the learning is constant and the person in front of you is your inspiration or motivation or both. If you're on top, what's there to aspire to?
So I'll keep hating myself and hating my art and hating how I seem to not improve at all, but I will keep on drawing because there are people in front of me and sometimes just playing catch up isn't as bad as it sounds.
Let's keep working hard in 2016!
Have I improved this year? Probably not. I learned stuff, tried out different papers and paint and pens and brushes, experimented with different techniques, and yet I don't think I'm anywhere near improvement. There's always someone better, always someone to try to catch up to. But I think that's part of the fun in all art forms: the learning is constant and the person in front of you is your inspiration or motivation or both. If you're on top, what's there to aspire to?
So I'll keep hating myself and hating my art and hating how I seem to not improve at all, but I will keep on drawing because there are people in front of me and sometimes just playing catch up isn't as bad as it sounds.
Let's keep working hard in 2016!
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