I looked at my artwork in the past, on deviantart. I don't believe in just throwing away my old artwork. I don't think anyone should. How will you know if you've gotten better?
 |
| Jan 2005 |
 |
| Feb 2010 |
|
|
These two are the same character, Geneva. I mean, this isn't the best example of how I've gotten better, but there's a definite contrast in how I started to draw her. I feel her character design is more solidified in the second image. That is not what she wears on a daily basis though! It's more like the first image.
 |
| late 2010, lolita from GLBs. |
 |
| Late 2010 early 2011, commission from Gaia. |
I was soooo interested in anime and manga. Anime and Manga everything! Now, even though I like it, I'm pretty passive about it. I rarely read or watch anime and manga now. I stick to watching my few favorite animes and episodes more and more. I love shows that aren't anime.
I've really changed as a person-artist in the last 5-6 years, not to mention looking over the course of 18-ish years of drawing. I can see which pictures show a unique change in my drawing style, where I learned something crucial. I still have most of my sketchbooks, each spanning 1.5 years of my drawing career. I never noticed really that I get a new sketchbook every year.
I'd say nowadays, I write ideas and sketches rather than finished and colored drawings in my sketchbook. My sketchbook is used more to write down ideas, rather than make complete sets of artwork on every page. I am less stringent in this. I think this is because I've slowly transitioned from being a physicist/mathematician to a video game concept artist. During the epoch in which I wanted to be a physicist/mathematician, I was very perfectionist, and worked painstakingly on my artwork. During this occupational epoch, the ideas and concepts are far more important than individual art pieces. All of the little sketches and lines of text I write serve to culminate in a larger, more expressive piece of artwork or series. I have definitely improved. Drawing finished pieces without ideas as to what it means is no way to draw.
While I was becoming a young adult, I had a conflict of being a young artist that absolutely loved anime and manga everything. However, my style wasn't 'cute' enough. I felt bad because my characters weren't adorably 'moe' or 'kawaii' or ''sexy' and I strove to copy more popular internet anime artists, because they were popular.
I kind of see now how hollow a pursuit that was. Where are these popular anime artists now? They are drawing the same artwork, the same expressions, the same situations, and characters that look almost identical to years ago. That's not what I want to be, just a one liner, just a gimmick.
 |
| I drew in class. 2007. This has elements similar to art styles I would only now learn about. Constructivist, for example? |
I still draw anime artwork, but I've branched out, and discovered that I like traditional artwork styles. I really discovered that I loved surrealism, constructivism, and Dada. Taking Multimedia Century has helped me realize there are more important issues that need to be drawn, sculpted or painted, other than "this girl in the japanese schoolgirl clothes is blushing over something". I think that anime art should be explored as a legitimate art style in museums that gained popularity in artists around the 1980s and exploded as a style in the 1990s, for educational purposes, because there are lots of misconceptions about its roots and subject matter. However, it shouldn't be taken seriously as something like... that should be taught to children in schools, like impressionism and color theory, or what types of lines you can make with what types of materials. It is like how you don't really teach children how to draw American cartoons in school.
 |
| I tried to copy the other artists. Oekaki. I barely knew how the tools worked! |
 |
| An image from back when I did anime art commissions on gaiaonline. I tried my best with CGing at the time. |
|
I cannot despise anime. It taught me how to draw and kept me striving to learn why I wanted to draw what I drew, and what I should draw. It helped me discover character design, environmental design, fashion design, and of course, lolita. The thing is, I started with anime and then expanded my interests, and as I grew, my knowledge and mastery of stylus based art and ideas grew. Other artists I grew up with have done that as well. A lot of times, I vastly prefer their anime styled artwork much more than what they have recently turned to. For example, this woman was my idol, and she's still amazing artist. But I still loved her oekaki drawings much better, and looking at her progress in them over the years.
Loish.net.
I just find it a shame when someone demands to be called a true artist, and they draw the same things over and over again.... with no concept behind the ideas.
I was just looking at these old drawings, and I wish to redraw them. It will be like an artist making a new take on an older piece of artwork. Because I am a new artist. A different artist.
These are some of the images I want to redraw. I still love them, its just that I can remake the concept behind the image.
- MNR
