Artistic confession

For years, I've been entertaining people with my artwork. I've had some good times and I've had some bad times. But, through out those times, I've always felt an emptiness whenever I would do my work. Earlier this week, I found out what it was. I never found my true "drive". I wasn't drawing through emotion or inspiration, I was just "drawing" and it made me feel a bit foolish when I kept thinking to myself that I was trying to stand out. I was curious to know what people thought of my gallery throughout the years. Last week, I've gotten feedback from artists who have stepped up since I've watched their work and have watched mine since I started putting up my art. Many of it was positive, yet constructive. But I have to say, the most constructive out of all of them was by Dirk Erik Schulz. He wasn't sure how I was going to react once he gave me his critique, but I told him I wasn't worried. The next day or so, I received a full crit of my gallery, and he pretty much hit every nail on the head, and I love it!



One of the main points he brought up was that most of my work was very reminiscent of Kyle Carrozza's, which is absolutely true. I've made this point clear time and time again, that Kyle was the main reason I started on Deviant Art. The reason I originally made an account to show off some of my artwork to him and him only. When I first started off, I was just copying his eyes, facial features, etc. and putting them on different faces. It's pretty "head-bludgeoningly" obvious in some of my earlier pieces. After that, it just stuck with me and looking back at it now, it felt like I wasn't putting that much effort into any of my work. One thing that Dirk suggested was to try and redraw all of Kyle's expressions.
But the strangest thing is, once I did, my creative insomnia was cured for life. My mind at that point just went blank and I stopped drawing in the way I would usually draw.

Another point that Dirk brought up was that most of my stuff doesn't have a lot of construction put into it. Now, this is something that has been brought to my attention before by both Neil Ando and Ben Anders. Neil brought this up in my Walk Cycle animation that in both life drawing and art in general, that when you copy something, you have to get as close as humanly possible and not close with a splash of "you". Ben, made it very clear that construction was something that I have been lacking ever since I started off. He suggested that I do a few exercises that were on John K's blog, most of which I've done before hand. If I may go on a tangent here. For a while, I didn't want to touch anything involving John K because of something that happened a few years back that I don't wish to talk about. But after reading his blog and doing some of his exercises, I can see that he's only trying to help out people like me, rants aside. So, I give him a little bit of my respect for that. Anyway, back to the feedback. After doing some of the construction exercises, I noticed that whenever I would copy something it would always be either wonky or disproportionate (which Dirk had also pointed out) and you can see it here:



and here's what I wrote down for Lines of action:






and proportions:


The third thing that Dirk had pointed out, was that I've been putting to much on my plate at once i.e. Life drawings, creature drawings, animation, etc. and he's right. While I have to admit it was fun trying out different mediums, it was far too much to put on my plate especially with school clinging on to my back. Dirk made it clear that I have to get the basics right if were ever to move on to anything else.

Which brings me to the strong point of Dirk's critique. I have not been challenging myself. Looking back at everything I've done, I was really just posting drawings for other people, but I didn't draw them for myself. So, from here on in I'm going to challenge myself to draw more frequently. One thing that Dirk suggested was that I try to draw 100 different heads and expressions in one week to understand the hierarchy and construction. And once I've learned everything about head construction, I'll move on to the body, and once I've sucked everything in and that one "click" in my mind goes off, I'll finally have my true drive.

Which is why I'm having a hard time deciding what I should do now. One part of me says that I should start a new account, while the other half is telling me take a long hiatus from DA and come back when I REALLY have my stuff together. Till, then I'm going to continue my challenge and wait for that one "click" to go off. Thanks for listening and Peace out.