i am a visual and performing artist located in jersey as of now.
give these photos of mine a vibe check.
if you dig it, roll thru my page or hmu, let's be homies. 😎
##art
also: #artwork, #art
concepts for a character ill maybe finish one day. who knows
2016 -> 2018 -> 2021
Those "art 5 years apart" art trains are going around on Twitter, but I can't write a huge essay on Twitter so art train goes here instead
Those 3 pieces are the ones I consider the most successful in terms of illustrating a whole scene... which basically means they're the ones I was actually thinking of the background as part of the piece rather than an afterthought.
Despite the art train being "show me how you've improved in 5 years", I don't think the middle piece is worse than the last one at all. It's the one where everything clicked and I understood what I would consider "my style". I really like how flat everything looks, as if it was shot with a telephoto. The only thing I don't like in it is the chum in the foreground - artbook zine artists (me included) have this bad tendency of forcing several layers of depth to compositions, probably because of the vertical format. If you know what you're doing it works out, but if you don't, the foreground elements end up breaking the composition.
In that sense the last piece is way more balanced - the foreground elements steal the attention, but they're the main element of the piece so that's fine. I really like how the dark colors attract your eye there, and then it naturally flows up. There's a nice storytelling there - you see the scared squid kid, then you follow the ink trail and see the menacing octoling and find out what it's hiding from. Obviously, I didn't plan for any of this. I'm not that smart. But the contrast of the scene was all very intentional, so maybe it was instinct? Looking at it that way, now I'd make the bowling balls to the sides less dark, as they're catching the eyes a bit and breaking this flow.
Now back to the first piece, that's the one where I forced myself to draw a background, probably because these characters are my and Ally's gay furry children and Ally is a kickass background artist, so I felt inspired to try it too. The concept was "if these two characters had a house, how would it look like?". If anything, it's a character design challenge, but the background is the character. It's with this drawing that I kinda figured out you don't need to detail out and figure out everything that is in a background, as long as it has the right "vibes". But having a big repertoire of things you know exist helps a lot with this - even if its remembering there are more pen kinds than just BIC ballpoint.
Anyway I don't remember the point I was making here. I just like thinking about art and talking about my art. I don't have a lot of time or energy to draw, so thinking about it is the only thing I can do to improve nowadays