(no subject)

separate from my resolutions, i think i want my art focus this next year on... presentation.

i'm pretty good as an illustrator. i'm pretty good as a designer. but i haven't been able to mix the two where i can confidently say i make the most pleasing compositions that best support the drawings.

why? it's not about wanting eyeballs on my shit (though presentation feels like it's a superior technical skill to the other two to need there) - i just feel. hm. more certian that as i get better in pure technical skill, that i feel increasingly lacking in presentation? like that's suddenly the skills gap i notice more these days after finishing a piece rather than 'oh god that arm is way too short' or 'wtf is that foreshortening' like in the past. and i feel like it's a useful glue in comics to help direct eye tracking when pure anatomy or perspective might not be enough to fake a convincing scene.

(i notice hentai relies often on presentation through pure shape language and exaggeration and motion versus focus on exact anatomy - there's also the higher mix of "design" through loaaaads of SFX and text additions. it's that kind of mix i want to be able to poke more confidently at.)

(no subject)

the thing about an absolutely fucked bone structure is how much it breaks your frame of reference when drawing.

and not in the ... straightforward ways, either.

(i could never use my own hands as easy reference for pictures; even early on i recognized that the rhythm of the shapes were generally counterproductive to at least what i was trying to put on paper. same thing with the standard adult eye-level point of view.) (and fuck people who say 'whatever exists is normal ❤, yaddayadda-'. that's not the issue. good technical illustration is training the eye and pen to be able to output what you want to input -not exactly what you see- and if the rule system that you're taught simply isn't working for you right off the bat then that increases the friction and frustration of that simple task ten-fold.) (and then add fucked eyesight to that kek)

and so you spend years, decades hewing more closely (cautiously, blindly)(and somewhat two-facedly) to that frame of taught ""normal"" as an anchor to reduce the friction and how extra hard slippery drawing aspects sometimes feels. reducing the uncanny valley, whatever. who the shit cares about drawing yourself when there's other worlds to draw, when people pay you to draw forms that are definitely not like you. 

even as you mature in technical skill and the training wheels ironically start becoming even more of a hindrance in other ways when it's time to learn more subtle skills as differentiation of bodies, points of views - then it becomes harder to voluntarily let go of that frame of reference because your discipline is what kept you from subconsciously slipping back into your un-normal default.