#I tried a new style bc I usually take a long time rendering

[yuriyaoijesus]

fausttttttttt

[bakapandy]

Hello hello!

I come to you with an artistic existential crisis (feel free to ignore). So, I'm still kinda new to art, and I love drawing but the thing is, there so much stuff on social media, different people that I find absolutely amazing and I'm an easily influenced person and always come back to doubting myself on the path I'm currently taking. For exemple I do lineart but there are so many incredible lineless pieces of art that I question myself about this (I tried, it didn't feel right for me but I still feel like maybe I should try harder?) And then there are those who use thick lines while I do mine thin, muted colours versus bright colours or simply black and white...

So I guess what I want to ask is: how do you differentiate the art you simply admire and the element you actually want to put in your own art? How do you know what kind of stuff you want to make? Or I guess how you figured it out since you've been doing this for a really long time.

Anyway, thank you for gracing the world with your amazing art and have a nice rest of your day!

Oh it’s a daily struggle lmao, I see art I love and I’m like THIS WHAT I WANT TO DO and when I first started out, my style varied widely bc of that. But in general, my art is always influenced by whatever I’m currently interested in haha. Since I’m back on my Naruto BS, I take heavy influence from Kishimoto’s work, but I’ve added my own flair and stylistic choices based on my own experiences and personal taste. So it really is up to you on what you want to incorporate into your artwork.

I usually just keep a couple things in mind:

1. It takes time to incorporate new elements into your art style. Of course your style is going to be different from the original work, so whatever element you want to add has to be fitted to YOUR work, as it was fitted to the inspiration’s work. It may not work the first few times, it may not work the first dozen times, it may not work at all, but it never hurts to try it out. And Hey, you may even develop something new and better suits your style, which is what often happens to me haha.

Honestly there is nothing stopping you from trying out ALL of those different elements you mentioned, I certainly have before and I’m sure all artists have at some point. That’s the point of practicing and producing art! Go wild, especially since you said you’re just starting out

2. Keep in mind what your art goals are. Are you trying to achieve an aesthetic for professional purposes? Are you trying to match a style to tell a certain story?

For me, my goal is to be as LAZY AND FAST AS POSSIBLE. I don’t have much time to spent drawing so when I do want to draw something or make a comic, I want it to be done FAST. That’s why I rarely color. I simply don’t have the time to spend 8 billion hours thinking of a color palette and lighting and rendering artwork. Otherwise I’d never produce any content or finish any of the stories I want to write.

The same goes for linework, rarely do more than 2 passes of refining lines bc that would take too much time. That’s why my line work is squiggly and sketchy at times and that has somehow turn into a stylistic detail for me along the way. Of course, with practice, I’ve developed more confidence in line placement so I don’t have to do more than a couple passes anyway.

But this is just me, I don’t draw professionally and really only draw to satisfy my own interests, so this works for me. I am fully aware my work is not professional quality nor do I intend it to be, and I’m totally ok with that.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I saw your tags about atla!untamed and I immediately had the exact opposite thoughts! Wwx is an air bender (natural playfulness and constant pranking) somehow adopted into a water tribe family? (I first thought earth but youre right, nie is definitely earth) and lwj is fire nation. I tried to choose that based on what element was most structured (wrong word I think but it’s close to what I’m looking for) bc lwj is inseparable from gusu and it’s rigidity and rules. (mby second son of firelord?)

So let me preface this with: PLEASE go forth and write Wei Wuxian the Last Airbender, that sounds like some choice angst (H E Y throw the celestial mountain gang in there for good measure, make Cangse Sanren into a monk or something, maybe XXC, I just watched the Southern Air Temple and I have feelings about it) and I love having a million and one takes on a good AU concept, but I have actual Thoughts on why Wei Wuxian would be a firebender and it’s not just for the aesthetic.

If I was going to do an AtLA AU of the Untamed (which! I am not!), I would cast the clans as follows:

Water Tribe Jiang (obviously, especially since “attempt the impossible” is pretty on point for the Water Tribe’s motto in AtLA, see also: Sokka and Jiang Cheng would have a lot to talk about)

Fire Nation Wen (also kind of a gimme, in every conceivable way)

Earth Kingdom Jin and Nie (this one was a little harder, as the Jin aren’t strongly aligned with any elemental imagery and the Nie’s inclination toward loss of control doesn’t really match with the Earth Kingdom inclination toward toxic levels of staidness, however the Nie and the Jin are the most associated with material worldly concerns of the sects, with combat and wealth respectively, and also it just narratively works better if JGY is running a kingdom)

Which leaves the Lan sect to be the Air Nomads, in this universe probably called something else.  On the one hand, the Lan sense of humor is somewhat lacking.  On the other hand, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to take a slightly different view of air as an element and think of it as something...in need of management.  And more than anything, the Lan sect is the least associated with the physical world, the isolated sect in the mountains, with rules about letting go.  The Lan sect, in a lot of ways, is what the Air Nomads might have looked like if they weren’t joyful.  (They’re kind of what Aang tries to force himself to be, when he tries to be a better warrior, a better crusader, rather than leaning into his strengths, come to think of it.)  

Also, the best benders are always the ones who are able to combine elements of other styles into their own, especially apparently opposing ones--like Iroh, who uses a lot of waterbending-esque moves and styles in combination with firebending (and everything else, because Iroh is as close to an avatar as a single-element bender can get, really).  Lightning redirection, for example, sounds more like Katara’s healing than anything else, focused on redirecting energy through the lines of the body.  Lan Wangji is a siege-breaker of an airbender, is my point here, and when he’s questioned about it he scrupulously Does Not Mention that he actually uses fire- and earthbending techniques that he’s painstakingly integrated with airbending because once, when he was a teenager who hated being in love, a brilliant boy wondered if non-Avatar benders could blend techniques to improve them.

Anyway, that’s the logic I ran with, because LWJ is all about conflicting impulses in balance and the idea of an airbender being hailed as the finest warrior and siege weapon of the day is delightful to me.  I’m not writing this!  But if I was writing it I would love writing a siege-breaker Air Nomad!

NOW, Wei Wuxian.  Here’s the thing.  A couple things.

First, firebenders are different from other benders because they can make their element.  That’s not so much a problem for airbenders, sure, because if you don’t have air to bend, you have a bigger problem, but for water- and earthbenders, lack of their native element is really a sticking point.  Firebenders do not have that problem.  As long as they’re not hypothermic, they can make as much fire as they want, and enough training can render that a non-issue.  Firebenders can work with what they’ve got, even if “what they’ve got” is highly damaging to them (lightning, for example, which Iroh points out can kill the wielder as easily as the target).  Since working with what he had is what got Wei Wuxian in, like, a whole narrative’s worth of trouble, I couldn’t resist making him a firebender in this AU I’m not writing.

Second, and more narratively interesting to me personally, Wei Wuxian’s righteousness must be easily corrupted, in the view of the world.  Even as an Avatar.  It’s Wei Wuxian’s entire narrative purpose, to be corrupted in the view of the world.  With my usual disregard for “making sense,” I think if I did this I would condense the timeline of the war in AtLA to be closer to the timeline of the Untamed, because that first generation of people probably really hated the Avatar for leaving them.  If I was going to write this (I am NOT going to write this!!!!!), I’d say that Wei Wuxian did something that convinced everyone (or rather, that allowed JGY to convince everyone) that he corrupted the Avatar chain so severely that, when he died, another Avatar wasn’t even born.  This is where my concept of WWX running for it when WRH tried to use the Avatar state of a weapon comes in--if I was going to write this I would make it so that there was some kind of Incident with terrible collateral damage on all sides before WWX booked it.  The most effective way to do that and retain some of the core elements of the Untamed is to align him with the Fire Nation, and say that, when the Fire Nation attacked, depending on the Avatar as their ace in the hole, the other elements rallied hard to put them down and nearly wiped them out.  

With the Fire Nation in the losing seat rather than the winning, JGY wrote the history books and said that the Avatar was corrupted by the hand of the Fire Lord, and that the reason there’s been no sign of a new Avatar in 16 years (more than enough time to not only locate the new Avatar, but start training them accordingly) is because Wei Wuxian destroyed the chain.  Sixteen years later, earthbender Mo Xuanyu runs away from his abusive family, all the way to the Southern Water Tribe, where he has no power and no friends and he gets so thoroughly reamed out by Chief Jiang Cheng that the kickback cracks an iceberg.

Lo and behold, turns out the Avatar chain is alive and well, but also, Wei Wuxian is faced with being a Fire Nation Avatar in a world that’s spent sixteen years learning to hate him personally and the Fire Nation as a whole.  Also Yanli, Wen Ning, and Wen Qing are alive, I don’t make the rules, and also everyone thinks that Sizhui is a nonbender.  Everyone is wrong.

YOU KNOW

IF I WAS GOING TO WRITE THIS

WHICH I AM NOT