Things you just can't say to an artist
Dec. 11th, 2009 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
summer_jackelOK, so if you are in the furry thing, you've probably seen this meme that keeps going around, where an artist juxtaposes an old and current artwork, often of the same character, to demonstrate how her work and style has changed and improved. They're usually really interesting to look at.
I always feel a little weird, though, when I look at these things and, as sometimes happen, like the older work better than the new. The one I saw today had artist's character, then and now. The new work is extremely skilled (we're talking about a fairly well known artist here; I'm naming no names but it could be a lot of them), very slick, very pro, very computer generated. The old pic was a pencil sketch, pretty but with a great deal less technical sophistication, like something a new artist or talented teenager might doodle in the margins of paper, and it probably was. Still, I think I liked it better. Hard to say exactly why.
I guess traditional media just attract me more as a matter of personal aesthetic, although there's some lovely photoshop-generated art out there that I like a ton. Maybe it's that it seems a little more commercial, like the packaging art on a toy or something. Or perhaps I'm just interested in how an artist's eyes, hands and body interact with that media to create something unique. The photoshopped furry art has this sort of homogeneous plastic look so much of the time. It looks less individual to my eye in some ways.
Of course, CG art also tends to look more professional when you're looking at it on a computer. Maybe I just don't get it; it's certainly true that even cleaning up my work to post in PS is enough of a chore that I can't imagine enjoying computerized artmaking. Takes all kinds, and I'm certainly not down on people who art on a computer or anything, but it makes me sad when someone who's done a lot of trad stuff discovers the electronic media, and then you almost never see anything in real media from them again.
I'm not sure why I'm rambling about this and not finishing this here pile-of-furry-porn (real media, natch). I could do the meme, I guess; I still have pretty much all of my sketchbooks, boxes of them. Don't know that I ever will. Back to ink now.
I always feel a little weird, though, when I look at these things and, as sometimes happen, like the older work better than the new. The one I saw today had artist's character, then and now. The new work is extremely skilled (we're talking about a fairly well known artist here; I'm naming no names but it could be a lot of them), very slick, very pro, very computer generated. The old pic was a pencil sketch, pretty but with a great deal less technical sophistication, like something a new artist or talented teenager might doodle in the margins of paper, and it probably was. Still, I think I liked it better. Hard to say exactly why.
I guess traditional media just attract me more as a matter of personal aesthetic, although there's some lovely photoshop-generated art out there that I like a ton. Maybe it's that it seems a little more commercial, like the packaging art on a toy or something. Or perhaps I'm just interested in how an artist's eyes, hands and body interact with that media to create something unique. The photoshopped furry art has this sort of homogeneous plastic look so much of the time. It looks less individual to my eye in some ways.
Of course, CG art also tends to look more professional when you're looking at it on a computer. Maybe I just don't get it; it's certainly true that even cleaning up my work to post in PS is enough of a chore that I can't imagine enjoying computerized artmaking. Takes all kinds, and I'm certainly not down on people who art on a computer or anything, but it makes me sad when someone who's done a lot of trad stuff discovers the electronic media, and then you almost never see anything in real media from them again.
I'm not sure why I'm rambling about this and not finishing this here pile-of-furry-porn (real media, natch). I could do the meme, I guess; I still have pretty much all of my sketchbooks, boxes of them. Don't know that I ever will. Back to ink now.
