#i miss drawing them regularly... i've been so busy with events... it's been a long time!!!

[pemprika]

i will see you again across all universes 🌠

in any other worlds or timeline, i'd like to imagine their lives could eventually collide in some way, despite how different their paths may diverge. they continue to damage me... my cope is that i'm always thinking about their reunions in alternate universes

riso print with colors: fluorescent pink, blue, and fluorescent lime!

[chacusha]

Kind of a random post, but sometimes I see a post going around Tumblr telling people to not think of their art as "content" but rather just call your art "art," call your fiction "fiction," etc. Don't call it "content." I am too lazy to find the post in question, but in any case, that's not the only place I've seen this sentiment, so the original post isn't necessary -- I now regularly see people outside that post criticizing calling one's fannish or creative outputs "content" (presumably after having read that post).

And while I can kind of see the connection between "content" and "content producer" and this sort of undesirable culture of, like, overwork, monetization, obsession with clout/following, and/or pressure to constantly produce and not go too long without a lull in a stream of "content," I'm just not sure it's the word "content," or thinking of your fic/art/whatever generically as "content," that's the issue? I think that pressure would still exist regardless of what you call your social media posting and, conversely, I think "content" can be a very innocuous and appropriate way of thinking about one's outputs/contributions/whatever you want to call them, at least in a fandom context.

Cutting the rest because this got kinda long:

Like, I am not someone entirely immune to the pressure to create ever more art, but output/productivity/clout/monetization has never been something I really struggle with or which motivates me on social media. I don't have productivity goals (in the sense of sheer volume -- I do have big projects I badly want to finish because they burn a hole in my mind, and I sometimes need productivity goals in order to make any progress on them at all). I also don't attempt to make money off any of my art (it actively kills my art drive to do so), and so I'm also pretty indifferent about the popularity of what I make (aside from social factors or other natural artist desires to want one's talent/skill/achievement/etc. to be recognized, which I don't think is unusual or unhealthy for an artist unless it becomes pathological), because I am not financially dependent on my social media posts having far reach or anything like that.

But specifically when it comes to fandom, when I contribute to a fandom, I tend to be very multimedia in the way I do that. I write fic, I draw, I make graphics, I write meta/essays/manifestos, I make memes, I create events/communities/social activities, I collect reference material, etc. etc. The easiest, most succinct, and most accurate way to describe what I do is that I produce... content for my fandoms. I guess you could call it "outputs" but that sounds robotic and business-speaky. Or you could call it "works" but I don't like that because fan stuff is what I do as a break from work; they don't feel like work and I wouldn't describe them that way. Also, calling some of things I make "works" sounds a bit grandiose for what they are! Calling all those things "art" doesn't work either because I need to be able to distinguish my art-qua-general-fannish-activities from my visual/drawn art, and, between those two categories, I don't think the word "art" is an appropriate way to describe the first, especially when it fits the second much better (it depends on context, obviously -- sometimes "art" is clear as a generic, but if I'm talking about both things at the same time, it will not be). "Fanworks" doesn't work either because not all the things I produce are fanworks. It's... content. Like, maybe I am missing something obvious, but I literally cannot think of a better/more accurate way of talking about my collective fannish output (other than "my collective fannish output").

Another helpful use of the word "content" is when you're in, like, rareshipper hell (which I am). Then it becomes very tempting to be like:

...whenever someone posts anything related to your rarepair, no matter how small, off-the-cuff, or modest. Or really:

Like, there's a level of desperation you reach in a tiny fandom where literally anyone contributing anything feels like a life-restoring drop of water in a desert... When you're desperate for literally anything, it seems fine to say what you are craving is "content." I suppose I could also say, "Finally, some good fucking literally-anything-at-all for this fandom" instead. But the word "content" does the job.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I think the word "content" is getting a weirdly bad rap here. I do get the mental adjustment someone is urging you to make when they say, "Please don't think of your fic/art/whatever as content" because thinking of it as content first and fic/art/whatever second is an indication that you might be too preoccupied with ensuring you're always producing a steady stream of content without much care over what that content is, or thought as to why you feel pressured to keep churning out content. It could also indicate that you view your role as a fan or creative person as being a "content producer," someone whose value is dependent on how much you produce and whether you're producing, which can often be unhealthy (unless you do that for a job, are paid based on your level of output, and absolutely love your job -- then that's great!).

So I think that's a very valid and important PSA to make to creatives -- you need to be cognizant of when, like, you're becoming alienated from your art and especially your hobbies/fandoms/things you do in your spare time. I just also think there are legitimate uses for the word "content" specifically, especially in fandom (e.g. to describe your collective fannish output or your collective fannish intake when you're very multimedia in inclination) and so I personally haven't found the whole "content (derogatory)" attitude in fandom/on social media to be helpful to my particular situation, to be honest. Not contradicting the general sentiment of that post and its advice, but I just think thinking of your work as "content" is okay/appropriate, actually (situationally).

Anyway, sorry, I wrote a mini-essay again (I thought this would be "short").

[oathbreakerapologist]

One Half Year of Oathbreaker Apologist

It's been almost exactly six months since I started drawing regularly for the first time in years and subsequently turned this blog into an art blog, and it felt like a good opportunity to do a little retrospective!

Warning that this post got ridiculously long lmao.

Several years ago, I left the art school I'd spent pretty much all of high school dreaming of attending, and I went off to get a very different degree and pursue a STEM career (of my own free will, lmao). I'm starting this post with that bit of information in order to say that for most of my life, I fully planned on being an artist professionally, and I was well on my way to doing so; I did sculpture, installation, and performance as well as (traditional) drawing and painting, and I'd shown work in galleries and a museum. Then, for a variety of reasons, I left the art world, and I mostly stopped making art. Towards the end of my short time in art school, I'd picked up digital art, and I picked it up occasionally throughout the post-art-school period, mostly to make the odd portrait of a DND character approximately twice a year. But I was busy, and I felt like I just didn't have much to say through art anymore.

A kind of funny series of events happened in late December/early January of 2024. One was that I finally started playing BG3. The other was that I encountered the art of @/meanbossart and @/barbatusart for the first time. I could say a lot more about what the body of work produced by those two has done for me as an artist, but all I'm going to say for now is that their work taught me to love digital art again. So, in approximately early January, I picked up my iPad, and I drew something, and I drew something, and I drew something, and I drew something, and... I just kept drawing. For the first time in a long time, all I wanted to do was draw. My life began to revolve around it. When I was working or out and about or otherwise busy, there was a little clock ticking in the back of my mind, counting down the hours or minutes until I could go back to drawing.

All I want is to make images I like, and have fun while making them. If I've done both of those two things, I've succeeded. Over the past six months, I've succeeded a lot.

All that being said, I wanted to do a bit of a look-back at some of the things I've drawn over the past six months!

January/February

My first-ever pass at drawing Ghost, an approximately 30-minute sketch-paint, is top left. I've changed his features quite a bit since then, but it's fun to know that the downturned eyes and high nose bridge were rock-solid locked-in since day one. You can also see the vague shape that eventually evolved into his weird little U-shaped forehead wrinkle. After that I moved into my "tidy hatching and geometric forms" era, which was interesting and which helped me improved my line confidence and pen control quite a bit, but which was ridiculously tedious to do lmao.

March

I tried doing a comic for the first time (top left), and while the final product is hit-or-miss to me now, I learned a lot from it, and I produced one of my favorite Ghost faces I've ever done (top left image, top right panel). I also drifted away from the super neat, tidy, geometric style. Around this time was when I really locked in on the way I wanted to do most of Ghost's features—his triangle eyebrows showed up for the first time here and have stayed ever since—and I played a bit with his body type (which still looks different every time I draw him lmao). Then I did another comic (bottom right image), which I like the look of quite a lot more.

April

I rediscovered white on black, something I did quite a bit of when I was doing traditional art. It produces a look I find really evocative, like good black-and-white film photography. I also drew a different guy. Allegedly I do that sometimes.

May

I don't know how I did this, and I couldn't do it again if I tried. What the hell.

January through March was pretty sparse on strong highlights. I started to become less afraid of them around this time. I also started to pin down Ghost's sense of personal style (for the rare occasions when he's not naked).

June/First Few Days of July

I'm in my Ghost Backstory Era and loving it. Every day I'm conniving about new ways to engineer Orin/Durge relationship agony. Genuinely, though, in the past couple months I've attempted and then finished several pieces that made me think, "Holy shit, I drew that," which is insanely exciting. Also, I'm starting to feel like I've finally started to land in a satisfying place with respect to the ongoing battle between my two favorite ways to depict anatomy, using either a lot of blocky, geometry forms or a lot of slinky curvy shapes.

I don't really have much of a conclusion to this, other than to say how much I appreciate the handful of people that leave fun comments/tags on my work—y'all's comments mean so much to me, your enthusiasm about my art makes me insanely stoked, thanks for all the love for my guy!

If any of y'all made it all the way through this long-ass post, thanks for reading :)