Sit Down, Do It (Convention Season Post-Mortem)

As August passes us by, so too does the convention season. This year I went off to Seattle, Los Angeles, and what at the time felt like every niche corner and big show in Vancouver (all...uh, four, of them).

It was a tumultuous journey, filled to the brim with a crazy workaholic drive I haven't experienced before, full of no-sleep to the point of near breakdown; a streak of masochism - in the most positive way - driven by a single minded purposefulness.

From entering a contest to breaking positive in gross, I learned quite a bit on my journey of scrounging up art this year. This conceit can be neatly summarized in the following Calvin and Hobbes strip:

This is not philosophy to live by.

Self reflections and self indulgence after the break.

Essentially my output at conventions was curtailed by horrid lifestyle changes thrown around my job schedule.  In the midst of ever encroaching deadlines, time simply seemed to evaporate, leaving me under immense pressure to make slap-bang decisions, especially relevant as I am not the fastest - or focused or prolific - artist. I wouldn't say I was exactly working at the last last minute, but often I skirted very very close.

On this journey, I learned some important lessons:

Get sleep. Despite what the body might tell or the brain's insistence that human beings should go beyond your limits, they exist. While the creative high makes an artist soar, it also unfortunately plays on personal indulgence. Whenever I was in the moment, I just wanted to go and take on any challenges, scribble hard, and start squiggling out all sorts of stuff to fill in the page. The morning after, though I had to cut out at least half of the stuff that was mostly self indulgent over-busy crap. Artwork may be an organic process, but like many organic processes, they tend to falter and not work right if you don't rest them and clear head is much less flaky.

Don't take risks with fanart. When people are shopping around in the Artist's Alley, unless you possess e-fame for a unique house style, they are looking for goods made in a hard likeness. In my case I was trying to be a smarty-artie and tried get ahead of the curve of the Titan fandom. I drew a composition with the Female Titan from Shingeki no Kyojin after reading ahead in the manga. The reaction was mixed. Seasoned Titan aficionados were stymied by the spoilers (although if you know it's a spoiler how can it be a spoiler?) and when the her debut episode premiered, people were not super impressed with my liberal interpretation. Whoops.

BodyWorlds Titan. Hawt. What's 'canon'?

Eat real food. To put this simply, well: Drawing is a sedentary activity; Ice cream sandwiches + sedentary activity = garbage for your body. Sugar pumping through the bloodstream and straight into the brain can seem to be worth the charge it gives, since it works as a sort of booster to push through those last hours but it's not exactly an awesome source of essential nutrients. On the other hand, sometimes I'd even forget to eat, fueled simply by the drive to produce. Somebody once said that if you want to be successful, you have to want it more than you want to eat. Me, I say get your chicken and vegetables in so you don't....die?

Exercise. Again, drawing is a sedentary activity, so get up off the chair every once in a while. As soon as one sits down to work, the body begins to shut down unnecessary processes for efficiency's sake. The legs aren't being used and the body's not going anywhere in a hurry, so the heart rate and digestion slows, blood pressure drops, and oxygen demands fall. This parasympathetic rest mode does terrible wonders for the blood sugar, mental clarity, and general eudaimonia all over. To push through I thought I needed to put in all hours all the time, and as a result I'm still trying to get back into shape three weeks after anime Revoltion; that's not going so great right now. You don't have to plow through an MMA grappler's circuit - although you totally should - but by just getting the heart and blood moving, you'll be able to think more clearly and work longer.

Things I need to work on

The collage of faces. This is a very easy, cliche, basic composition. It works because people will always like a bunch of characters, but on the other hand, it's very stock. Therefore not only can it get somewhat muddled and unfocussed wth the incorrect compositional geometry about the piece, but it doesn't particularly stand out either so it comes off as somewhat lazy.

YEAH! Headshots!

Legs.I am terrible at drawing legs. See any legs here? Nope. Unfortunately that's basically a whole half of the human body I'm neglecting, and the most expressive part of the body besides the face and hands. 

Animu in general. This is a terrible trend that's been mucking around since I was fifteen years old, but my 'natural' style is an unfocussed weird mess. Trying to mash that with a manga-flavoured aesthetic is an unfortunate amalgamation that satisfies neither the fan - for when you're looking in the AA for goods to buy, it should resemble what you're a fan of - nor myself - for I am neither producing something unique nor something awesome. Some people can make that work, but I'm not at that level yet.

At the moment, I think I'm an okay artist right now. With more time and effort I can be a lot better.Part of it is experience, part of it is practice, but most of it is willpower and love.Remember to keep scratching, observe, and never forget the loving of what you're doing.