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fireonlight-blog · 8 years ago

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Recent Adventures In Art

Alright so, I did say that I was going to start an art blog...

WELL, here it is.

tada

Anyway, today I’m gonna tell you about my recent adventures in art.

So I love art and I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil. Since it was always a hobby though, I never really practiced or studied it formally. By high school, I thought that maybe I’d grow up being a graphics designer by trade and later on I discovered jobs like concept art, animation, art direction, design, etc. From then on, I had this dream that maybe I’d do something like that for a living.

It didn’t take long though to find out just how hard drawing actually is and how far behind my skills were. Sure, to some I convincingly had some talent of sorts with drawing, and I even believed in that for a while. But what use is relying on talent without any foundation to stand on?

That foundation, I soon realized, is the years of hard work and practice that any master artist has under their belt. That is the stage on which talent can present itself.

But without that foundation, I was helpless as an artist.

So I gave up. I took the easy way out and decided that maybe art isn’t for me and turned my back on it.

Of course, it wasn’t just the lack of having ever tried that made me give it up. There were other factors-- financial, economical, all the other -als, you know, the kinds of things people in the real world must gripe over. “Artists don’t make money, don’t get jobs, starve”, etc etc. At that point I thought yep, might as well give up.

Now here we are three years later. I’m practically shooting myself in the foot because I can’t even seem to finish school. I’m at this limbo position, quite precarious, where before me lies a hundred foot drop into the abyss of failure and the wind is blowing pretty damn hard.

School for what, you ask? Oh you know, a real world profession like computer science. Something for my wallet and my future. Something that is more like a running gag to me now because I laugh whenever I think about what I’m actually putting myself through. Yay, success.

I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m defective for not being able to bite the bullet like everybody else. After all, how many times do we hear people talk about giving up their dreams for the sake of being practical, realistic, and so on. I mean, with the economy the way it is... with the art industry the way it is... with the rising cost of the living the way it is.. and other such sayings... It basically seems like following your dreams (if it’s art in this case) is damn near impossible.

Most people just settle. Let’s be frank. My parents settled. My siblings settled. Everybody I know settled. I don’t know of a single person in my life who’s actually doing their dream job. Everybody has the practical job. The job that earns, the job that’s stable, the job where you’re kinda sorta just satisfied. Heck, some people have no choice in the matter. Everybody has to earn a living, but there are definitely far worse options than settling. As everybody keeps telling me, “your one of the lucky ones, why can’t you see that?” Yeah, why can’t I see that? Again, I must be defective.

I just can’t seem to stand the thought of wasting away in a completely purposeless end. The act of going 9-5 doing something I can kinda cope with just to make enough money to survive, live comfortably, and do the same thing over again.

I should probably state that there are lots of people, in fact a good majority, who have jobs that are very very important, and that they actual do in fact enjoy. There are many who do have their dream jobs. Fortunately, for these people, their interests happen to be in line with jobs that are considered of high value and productive for society, in which case they are able to make a comfortable living out of it. If we’re being frank, there are also a lot of people who would say they made it, that they are living the dream.

I guess I’m just salty. Bitter. Not having a good taste in my mouth. Because the thing I happen to have interest in also happens to not be considered of high value to society, or at least that’s how it seems, what with the way that artists are paid today. It doesn’t seem to be a very practical and optimal option for sustainable living, at least in the eyes of my parents and those around me who’d like for me to pull my weight and also support everyone else. A lot’s depending on me I guess to rake in that money.

And that’s the way that the world works. I could go on...

But that’s already too many tangents. I let my existential crisis slip out for a bit there, sorry about that.

Besides all that angtsy non-sense, the rest of this post was suppose to be about my recent art adventures. Hurray!

I finally decided, after years of not doing art... to do art.

Not really as a profession though. I just realized I have some free time to learn. And also that I have an itch I need to scratch.

At this point, I’m driven by the sheer desire to do something creative. I have been bored out of my mind for the past few years, and maybe actually most of my life. I realize this creative itch ain’t never going away so I decided it’s time to start. It’s now or never.

Now comes the huge art hurdle. Basically, in order to create in visual arts, you kinda need a fuck ton of practice in the fundamentals of how to draw. How to draw shapes, light, value, shapes in light and value, perspective, objects from life, a glass of water, a bowl of fruit, people, bodies, muscles, limbs, hands, faces, eyes, the list goes on and on.

Drawing from imagination, doing the creative process, only comes after traveling down that road. Not until one gets comfortable with those fundamentals, can they expect to create from imagination, at least well enough.

I mean, of course you can just draw from imagination from the get go. But I’m defective, remember? And one of my deficiencies happens to be a strong perfectionist streak. I want to draw shit that looks good, amazing, or better, from my imagination. And currently, when I draw from imagination, it’s not.

So like all of my favorite artists, the greats, like Rembart, Michal Angelo, Vincent Vango, Spongebob Squarepants, and so on, I have to actually practice.

Now from the beginning.

So, my art adventures this past few weeks. How have they been?

I’ve actually drawn. This is the most I’ve drawn in consecutive days since.. ever I think.

And this post was actually supposed to talk about all that, but now that I’ve spent an hour typing all that other non-sense up, I’m about too tired to write about what I was actually supposed to write about.

Till next time, this has been art adventures with yours truly.

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