The 30 Day Fanart History Meme - Day 6
Day 6 - When you draw, do you prefer drawing male or female characters?
It's probably pretty obvious to anyone who has been following my work for a while, but I prefer drawing male characters by far and I always have, even when I was in junior high and high school. I love male muscle structure and think it's gorgeous, especially in the torso (which is part of what makes me so happy that my male muscle tutorial got the Daily Deviation this week!). I like drawing well-built male bodies in motion because I love how much power is contained in a comparatively small package overall, and I think that's one of the reasons I love drawing Inuyasha so much. He's like the embodiment of tons of power packed into not very much bulk at all.
One of the things that disappointed me about my figure classes at Ringling is that it was a rare treat if we got a male model that was actually fit with good muscle structure. Normally all we got were middle-aged flabby men with paunches and no real muscle definition to speak of, and even if the models were "fit", they were in their 80s. We weren't much more lucky when it came to the female models, either.
I thought I'd get a reprieve when I took Figure Anatomy as an elective my senior year but I was sadly out of luck there, too. While our two normal models had more muscle tone than most of the other models I had worked with, they still weren't what you'd call ideal for studying muscle structure. We made due, though.
I loved that class so much. I was already really into anatomy in my work and had done a lot of independent studying outside of my figure drawing classes (regular figure classes don't really delve into textbook muscle structure much... it's more about the entire form of the figure and how light and color and movement all work together), but that Figure Anatomy class really took my anatomy work to the next level. By the time the semester ended and I graduated I knew the textbook name of every superficial muscle there was, exactly where they were, and I could draw it out for you. While I've lost the extensive knowledge of textbook names save for major muscles, I still remember where they all are and how to draw them which was the important part anyway. Knowing the minute shapes and angles and "commonalities" (there are no steadfast rules in how muscles look, only commonalities... my hands are an example of that because they're built differently than anything the prof in that class had ever seen) to muscle and bone structure really make the difference in artwork between looking nice and looking amazingly realistic.
One of my pet-peeves is badly drawn male muscle structure in the torso and it gets poked on a daily basis on DA. 95% of the kids who draw "omg sexy!!!1" pictures of their fanbrat faves have absolutely NO clue what they're doing, so the image ends up looking ridiculously stupid instead of sexy. I say it in my tutorial (my vain attempt at combating the hideous anatomy errors I see everywhere): a twelve pack is NOT sexier than a six pack. One of the new comments on the tutorial also said it well: it isn't sexy to have a damn xylophone where the abs are supposed to be.
Then I had one person say there can sometimes be eight or seven abs and my hopes were temporarily dashed. lol Yes, SEVEN. While there are technically 8 abdominal muscles, they're so far down on the torso that you normally don't see them unless they are focused on specifically in weight training (and I specified there were technically 8 in the tutorial... reading comprehension FTW). If you have seven abs then I'm sorry, you're deformed.
But anyway... one of my current improvement projects that I've been working on for the last couple years is female anatomy. I'm just not that good at it and I know it needs work just as my hands and feet did before now. I have the physical structure and size differences between female and male anatomy down, I just need to perfect the subtleties of female anatomy the way I have for males. I LOVE doing anatomy comparisons between female and male and I play with that a lot in my InuKag artwork, particularly in their hands. If you look at just about any of my work where their hands are clearly visible next to each other, it's usually because I wanted to play with the anatomy contrast. A lot of the more erotic stuff I've done focuses on that, too, as a play off of the dominant/protective vs. the more gentle/nurturing.
They say women can usually draw women better than they can men because they're familiar with their own anatomy, but that isn't the case for me at all. Even when I was 14 and 15 years old I liked drawing men, and I liked drawing them as really strong heroic figures. The movement that a lot of people see in my work was added in once I was old enough to really know what it was and how to do it. I think all of this has affected how my work is perceived by others, too. Why?
Most people on DA think I'm a guy. If I had a dollar for every time someone has called me a variation of "good sir" in conversations over there I'd be rich. I know part of that is because of my handle just having "Kris" on it instead of "Kristin" and my icon is only the top part of my face/head, but I've been told it's partially because of my work as well. I've been told it doesn't look like work from a female artist. I'm not sure what work from a female artist is supposed to look like, but I take it as a compliment when people say they can't tell a girl produced my work.
That's not to say I don't want people to know I'm a girl or that it's a bad thing, I just think that the gender of the artist being apparent in their work isn't important. I think a lot of people default to men for artwork because it's a very male dominated field (illustration included), so I'd like to think my work is more on the gender-less side. Besides it just being recognized as MY work I'd rather not have people thinking about me while they're looking at it and wondering idle things like what my gender is. I just want them to focus on the piece itself and let it tell its story. It's kind of akin to when I used to play the piano competitively. Don't pay attention to me, just listen to the music and look at the piano. That's the point.
...I'm having a real problem with de-railing while answering these meme prompts. >_>
Day 5 - If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a pic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
Day 4 - Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the pic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
Day 3 - For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to draw?
Day 2 - Name the fandoms you've drawn in, and how much you've drawn in that fandom, and if you still draw in it.
Day 1 - How did you first get into drawing fanart, and what was the first fandom you ever drew for? What do you think it was about the fandom that pulled you in?
Upcoming...
Day 7 - Have you ever had a pic change your opinion of a character?
Day 8 - Do you draw OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.
Day 9 - Pairings - For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to draw?
Day 10 - Pairings - Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and drawn a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't draw, or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?
Day 11 - Genre - do you prefer certain types of art when you're drawing? What kind do you tend to draw most?
Day 12 - Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" pic of a favorite book or movie (or image) but set in a different fandom?
Day 13 - Do you prefer canon or fanon when you draw? Has drawing fanart for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
Day 14 - Ratings - how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever drawn higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the picture you're drawing is G-rated instead?
Day 15 - Warnings - What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a pic?
Day 16 - Descriptions - Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
Day 17 - Titles - Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the pic? Also, if you do a series of pictures, do you give each piece a title, or not?
Day 18 - Where do you get the most inspiration for your pics (aka "bunnies") from?
Day 19 - When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start drawing right away, or do you thumbnail the idea for further use?
Day 20 - Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?
Day 21 - Sequels - Have you ever drawn a "sequel" to a pic you drew, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?
Day 22 - Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?
Day 23 - When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
Day 24 - Critiquing and Proofing - How many "previewers" do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your pic? Do you have a Proofing or Critiquing horror story or dream story?
Day 25 - Music - Do you listen to music while you draw? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to draw your pic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
Day 26 - What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a pic?
Day 27 - Where is your favorite place to draw, and do you draw traditionally by hand or digitally on the computer?
Day 28 - Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether drawing together, or having a writer work on a piece about your pic?
Day 29 - What is your current project or projects?
Day 30 - Do you have a favorite pic you've drawn? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
The wooziness and blahs that I was warned come with starting anti-depressants suck. I know it'll be worth it in the long run, though. I plan on using my motivation to work as the gauge of how well the meds are working, if they're starting to kick in yet, and whether or not my dose needs to be increased (and yes I know it'll take at least four weeks to feel anything). That's what I'm looking forward to getting back the most, I think, is my motivation. I want to get back to being constantly creative from the time I wake up until I go to bed every day because I absolutely WANT to, not because I'm making myself meet my obligations.
It's probably pretty obvious to anyone who has been following my work for a while, but I prefer drawing male characters by far and I always have, even when I was in junior high and high school. I love male muscle structure and think it's gorgeous, especially in the torso (which is part of what makes me so happy that my male muscle tutorial got the Daily Deviation this week!). I like drawing well-built male bodies in motion because I love how much power is contained in a comparatively small package overall, and I think that's one of the reasons I love drawing Inuyasha so much. He's like the embodiment of tons of power packed into not very much bulk at all.
One of the things that disappointed me about my figure classes at Ringling is that it was a rare treat if we got a male model that was actually fit with good muscle structure. Normally all we got were middle-aged flabby men with paunches and no real muscle definition to speak of, and even if the models were "fit", they were in their 80s. We weren't much more lucky when it came to the female models, either.
I thought I'd get a reprieve when I took Figure Anatomy as an elective my senior year but I was sadly out of luck there, too. While our two normal models had more muscle tone than most of the other models I had worked with, they still weren't what you'd call ideal for studying muscle structure. We made due, though.
I loved that class so much. I was already really into anatomy in my work and had done a lot of independent studying outside of my figure drawing classes (regular figure classes don't really delve into textbook muscle structure much... it's more about the entire form of the figure and how light and color and movement all work together), but that Figure Anatomy class really took my anatomy work to the next level. By the time the semester ended and I graduated I knew the textbook name of every superficial muscle there was, exactly where they were, and I could draw it out for you. While I've lost the extensive knowledge of textbook names save for major muscles, I still remember where they all are and how to draw them which was the important part anyway. Knowing the minute shapes and angles and "commonalities" (there are no steadfast rules in how muscles look, only commonalities... my hands are an example of that because they're built differently than anything the prof in that class had ever seen) to muscle and bone structure really make the difference in artwork between looking nice and looking amazingly realistic.
One of my pet-peeves is badly drawn male muscle structure in the torso and it gets poked on a daily basis on DA. 95% of the kids who draw "omg sexy!!!1" pictures of their fanbrat faves have absolutely NO clue what they're doing, so the image ends up looking ridiculously stupid instead of sexy. I say it in my tutorial (my vain attempt at combating the hideous anatomy errors I see everywhere): a twelve pack is NOT sexier than a six pack. One of the new comments on the tutorial also said it well: it isn't sexy to have a damn xylophone where the abs are supposed to be.
Then I had one person say there can sometimes be eight or seven abs and my hopes were temporarily dashed. lol Yes, SEVEN. While there are technically 8 abdominal muscles, they're so far down on the torso that you normally don't see them unless they are focused on specifically in weight training (and I specified there were technically 8 in the tutorial... reading comprehension FTW). If you have seven abs then I'm sorry, you're deformed.
But anyway... one of my current improvement projects that I've been working on for the last couple years is female anatomy. I'm just not that good at it and I know it needs work just as my hands and feet did before now. I have the physical structure and size differences between female and male anatomy down, I just need to perfect the subtleties of female anatomy the way I have for males. I LOVE doing anatomy comparisons between female and male and I play with that a lot in my InuKag artwork, particularly in their hands. If you look at just about any of my work where their hands are clearly visible next to each other, it's usually because I wanted to play with the anatomy contrast. A lot of the more erotic stuff I've done focuses on that, too, as a play off of the dominant/protective vs. the more gentle/nurturing.
They say women can usually draw women better than they can men because they're familiar with their own anatomy, but that isn't the case for me at all. Even when I was 14 and 15 years old I liked drawing men, and I liked drawing them as really strong heroic figures. The movement that a lot of people see in my work was added in once I was old enough to really know what it was and how to do it. I think all of this has affected how my work is perceived by others, too. Why?
Most people on DA think I'm a guy. If I had a dollar for every time someone has called me a variation of "good sir" in conversations over there I'd be rich. I know part of that is because of my handle just having "Kris" on it instead of "Kristin" and my icon is only the top part of my face/head, but I've been told it's partially because of my work as well. I've been told it doesn't look like work from a female artist. I'm not sure what work from a female artist is supposed to look like, but I take it as a compliment when people say they can't tell a girl produced my work.
That's not to say I don't want people to know I'm a girl or that it's a bad thing, I just think that the gender of the artist being apparent in their work isn't important. I think a lot of people default to men for artwork because it's a very male dominated field (illustration included), so I'd like to think my work is more on the gender-less side. Besides it just being recognized as MY work I'd rather not have people thinking about me while they're looking at it and wondering idle things like what my gender is. I just want them to focus on the piece itself and let it tell its story. It's kind of akin to when I used to play the piano competitively. Don't pay attention to me, just listen to the music and look at the piano. That's the point.
...I'm having a real problem with de-railing while answering these meme prompts. >_>
Day 5 - If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a pic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
Day 4 - Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the pic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
Day 3 - For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to draw?
Day 2 - Name the fandoms you've drawn in, and how much you've drawn in that fandom, and if you still draw in it.
Day 1 - How did you first get into drawing fanart, and what was the first fandom you ever drew for? What do you think it was about the fandom that pulled you in?
Upcoming...
Day 7 - Have you ever had a pic change your opinion of a character?
Day 8 - Do you draw OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.
Day 9 - Pairings - For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to draw?
Day 10 - Pairings - Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and drawn a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't draw, or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?
Day 11 - Genre - do you prefer certain types of art when you're drawing? What kind do you tend to draw most?
Day 12 - Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" pic of a favorite book or movie (or image) but set in a different fandom?
Day 13 - Do you prefer canon or fanon when you draw? Has drawing fanart for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
Day 14 - Ratings - how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever drawn higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the picture you're drawing is G-rated instead?
Day 15 - Warnings - What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a pic?
Day 16 - Descriptions - Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
Day 17 - Titles - Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the pic? Also, if you do a series of pictures, do you give each piece a title, or not?
Day 18 - Where do you get the most inspiration for your pics (aka "bunnies") from?
Day 19 - When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start drawing right away, or do you thumbnail the idea for further use?
Day 20 - Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?
Day 21 - Sequels - Have you ever drawn a "sequel" to a pic you drew, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?
Day 22 - Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?
Day 23 - When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
Day 24 - Critiquing and Proofing - How many "previewers" do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your pic? Do you have a Proofing or Critiquing horror story or dream story?
Day 25 - Music - Do you listen to music while you draw? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to draw your pic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
Day 26 - What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a pic?
Day 27 - Where is your favorite place to draw, and do you draw traditionally by hand or digitally on the computer?
Day 28 - Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether drawing together, or having a writer work on a piece about your pic?
Day 29 - What is your current project or projects?
Day 30 - Do you have a favorite pic you've drawn? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
The wooziness and blahs that I was warned come with starting anti-depressants suck. I know it'll be worth it in the long run, though. I plan on using my motivation to work as the gauge of how well the meds are working, if they're starting to kick in yet, and whether or not my dose needs to be increased (and yes I know it'll take at least four weeks to feel anything). That's what I'm looking forward to getting back the most, I think, is my motivation. I want to get back to being constantly creative from the time I wake up until I go to bed every day because I absolutely WANT to, not because I'm making myself meet my obligations.