After I finally shared this "blog," I was kind of overwhelmed with a combination of panic and embarrassment or something- not because I feel bad about anything I wrote but because it's kind of a natural reaction to "putting myself out there" I guess. Wow! I recommend it.
New Years was tight. Things feel fine.
So. I came here because I wanted to share this digital drawing I did:
It's a "remake" of this marker drawing I did over the summer:
I feel like I'm a few months too removed from when I actually drew this originally, but it was definitely during a period of time when I was hyped on this set of markers. I probably just wanted to challenge myself to do a full-on, composed and populated drawing. I usually end up drawing a character and no world around it. I'd started drawing the triangle guy in like 2020-21. Still trying to find where it belongs. The cube is a "character" I'd painted with watercolor when I was in Chicago. I wanted to keep using that. I like that it's a combination of simple geometry, with a simple face, surrounded in these venomous, awful thorny vines. I don't know if I want to admit that I know very little about what I intend to do with these characters or this world, but I think I'm getting closer to something. I mean, that's something I'm learning to accept. Younger me would've romanticized the idea of being transmitted these images of a fantasy world from a divine source, but I think the reality is that it's a puzzle comprised of smaller "ideas". Sometimes it feels like magical inspiration, but as I get older it just feels like an exercise. It's a whole lot of "what if" and then you actually have to make your hand do the rest.
The marker drawing is very apparently an improvised piece. I rarely sketch things before I draw them and I think that makes things all warbly or something. (If 'warbly' isn't a word, then why do I know what it means?) Just got a craving for someone's pasta leftovers. But yeah maybe I ought to sketch things, but that also isn't the point, for me. Ultimately, it's easier to sketch things when working on a tablet. It doesn't feel wasteful. It's faster.
I think when I made the digital version, I was just looking for something to revisit. I just wanted something to re-do. So I found this one.
It's weird to contextualize this kind of thing. It's a stand-alone art piece. There may be a larger story. For most, it won't be viewed in the same realm as a "painting" in which a few figures or composed against a backdrop, with many things occurring. I'm avoiding saying "renaissance painting" because that's far too general for what I'm trying to describe. It's also not quite anything else I've seen in comics or digital art. It's just a piece for practice, I guess. It's just there. It's a portrait. A tableau. Whether the story is of the triangle on a quest into the mountains or not, it's a photograph of all of this stuff going on. He's posing. There's props. A setting. Damn it. Talking about it isn't useful. It exists as a necessity. I ought to limit my descriptions to the medium and the timeframe in which I made it. Because everything else ought not be talked about.
I'm watching Johnny Carson.
Happy New Year.
