What's your style (Get yer gen-yoo-in Katt piece here!!!)
I've been thinking the past few months about artistic style[1]. I remember specifically setting out to have a particular style when I started drawing comic book characters. I wanted to be just like Jim Lee. Those days being the 90's, EVERYONE & their monkey wanted to draw like Jim Lee. Unless they wanted to draw like Rob Liefeld. DO NOT LIE, YOU KNOW YOU DID, TOO. With other types of illustration, I wanted to be Brian Froud or James Christiansen.
I didn't actually get art lessons. I think I was aware enough of my parents' financial situation to understand that even though they offered to pay for lessons, it would be damn tight. Then later, when we were better off, I was too damn proud to get lessons. *L* I was already known as The Artistic One (or at least one of them) in high school; taking lessons would mean that I didn't know as much as I pretended I did [2]. And while I took art classes in high school, my Catholic school isn't what they show in the media. It was ghetto. Commodore 64s in 1998 ghetto. After Gr. 8, the teachers pretty much let me do whatever I wanted as long as I could relate it to their syllabus [3].
I didn't set out to have a particular style with writing probably because I wasn't aware of writing style; I just read stories. Kind of like how most people don't take apart the cinematography in Iron Man vs Dark Knight [4]. Now I know I love Neil Gaiman's style. His writing is both atmospheric & sarcastic if that makes any sense. I'm pretty sure you can look at excerpts-- unmarked, titleless-- & be able to pick out Gaiman's writing. It's the same with Julia Quinn, Robin McKinley & Joss Whedon. While I like JK Rowlings' stories, I'm not sure if she has a style that I can pick out; in fact, I think I like most writers for storytelling rather than style. And hey, fair enough, I'm there mostly for the story anyway.
This got me thinking about my style. I was joking around with lady_sarai that you know you're reading Katt's fics when there's constant transitions between present day & flashbacks. Whole chapters of "Elemental" & parts of "Prodigals." A bunch of my one-shots-- " Just a Little Green," " Extasie," " Etienne," " Lion-Headed Goddess" -- flip between time like a malfunctioning DeLorean. Heck, Call Back Yesterday was a giant excuse to time-travel. I don't recall setting out to do that. I have a sinking feeling time-flipping is due to laziness rather than style. If that's the case, I must stop ASAP. I really hate feeling as though I haven't progressed [5]. I like description far too much so I have run-on sentences or ten frillion similes. I'm addicted to semi-colons & the words that, also, so & and. I feel an intense need to tell the reader what the characters are doing while they're talking. My characters' eyes used to roll all over the place but now they just sigh. A lot.
Which brings me to art. I do distinctly remember, when I first thought of majoring in fine arts, wanting to be an illustrator who had A Distinctive Style. Not that I didn't love Jim Lee any more; my love for him will always be pure & true[6]. Half of what I know about drawing I got from him; the other half from real figure drawing in university[6]. My favourite artists these days still have Distinctive Styles: Francis Manapul, Skottie Young, _ming Doyle, Dean Trippe, Jody A Lee, Jay Anacleto & Karl Kerschl.
My frustration with my own art is that I feel I haven't really improved or grown. I know 90% of this is because I don't draw much any more & I DO want to work on that[8]. I'm disppointed in myself I guess.
Look, I drew this in 2002:
Compare with this in 2004-ish:
I don't abuse my smudge stick any more. I was all about realism in high school/early uni whereas now, I appreciate graphic, even geometrical, styles. But the figure drawing itself, IMHO, remains the same. There's also a bit more angularity to my lines[9]. Thing is, I don't know if that comes from my utter delight in Art Deco or because it's my short-cut when I can't remember exactly how cloth/knees/hair is supposed to lie. *LMAO*
You can really see that in these two images, both illustration work (work!) for 2 different authors.
This is 2006-ish:
This is 2009:
Again, 2006
And 2009
I think I might've actually gotten worse with the anatomy because I'm now more interested in dynamic movement & foreshortening everything.
There's a difference with my panels as well. Back in early 2K, I was all about the detail but the camera angles were quite simplistic.
There's every single strand of hair, embroidery on the girl's bodice, the very many skirt folds & the tree bark DEAR GOD THE TREE BARK. I can't even comprehend how I had the patience to do that. Right now, I try to think of ways NOT to draw wrinkles on clothes (It's not easy).
Now, I'm comfortable enough to put the camera everywhere but have gotten lazy with the details.
The thing is, I'd love, love, LOVE to combine the two. If I could just stop being lazy be comfortable with detailing again, I think I could really be the illustrator I started out to be when I was 11, drooling over Jim Lee's art. But to do that, I have to practice more. This is why I want to draw so much this year. I want my style to be dynamic camera + insane detail. I want intense blocks of black that can stand on its own, not really 3D shading but with crazy details & texture. I don't want it to be realistic like Jay Anacleto's stuff but not quite as cartoon/graphic as say Skottie Young or Colleen Coover (love all their work but that's their style, not mine) If when I learn to colour, that'll be the aspect that adds three-dimensionality.
What I want to know, dear flist, is what's your style? It can be writing, drawing or manips but what would make someone point to a story or image & go, "I can tell INSTANTLY that this is Such&Such's work." If you're not there yet, what do you want it to be & how will you go about doing this?
FOOTNOTES
[1]This is likely because I'm almost finished my nursing degree; I recall being thisclose to finishing my fine arts degree & being pre-occupied with anatomy & physiology of physical mutations as they exist in comic books.
[2] In hindsight, I really wish my high school teachers had been stricter about the lessons. I know they were all teaching to the average & while I was above average, I was by no means brilliant. I had plenty of room for improvement if they had just pushed me instead of letting me name my grade. Which was awesome on my transcript but, dammit, I could've really used some solid lessons on classical drawing & painting techniques that didn't come from library books.
[3] I had one teacher who let me name my grade in every art assignment. When I was in Gr. 11, the counsellor put me in Art 12 which I think was supposed to challenge me but after all those years of taking it easy, having older kids who kicked my butt in painting just made me resentful. My personality fault, not the counsellor's. They should've stuck me in the older classes since Gr. 9 to get me used to being challenged. Ah, well.
[4] I kind of wish I joined the Creative Writing Club though but I had a genius friend who wrote circles around me; I couldn't stand the competition. She was over Sylvia Plath when I was just discovering Tennyson. This friend also became a nurse long before I did. She's probably better at that than I am, too. Damn her. DAMN HER AND HER PRODIGIOUS BRAIN.
[5] However, what I hate the most is the feeling that I have something stuck in my back molars. There's this gap that never closed even after braces & retainers; it always catches food. Drives me nuts.
[6] Not in the stalker way. Honest.
[7] The models were all skinny former hippies instead of the Greek Pantheon I'd been led to believe existed in all figure drawing classes. One of them would, during the breaks, stand beside us STILL NAKED & comment on our work STILL NAKED. HIDE YOUR SCROTUM, MAN! IT IS WRINKLED & HAIRLESS!
[8] Then there's colouring. ARGH. I've had exactly 3 lessons in colour theory: 1 in Gr. 4 where I taught myself about the colour wheel from a book, 1 in Gr. 9 where my teacher slapped on A on a colour wheel that took 5 minutes to mix, & 1 in First Year Painting where, you guessed it, we did a colour wheel. I ROCK at the colour wheel. Give me any damn wheel & I will rainbow the crap out of it. No one has taught me what to do with that damn colour wheel once you've made it. Bob Ross barely counts. I glean information from different sites & artists who are nice enough to explain their process in books or blogs. When I colour, I feel like I'm 10 years old again, borrowing the 25 books on drawing from the library.
[9] Thank you, fateschewtoy for pointing that out.
I didn't actually get art lessons. I think I was aware enough of my parents' financial situation to understand that even though they offered to pay for lessons, it would be damn tight. Then later, when we were better off, I was too damn proud to get lessons. *L* I was already known as The Artistic One (or at least one of them) in high school; taking lessons would mean that I didn't know as much as I pretended I did [2]. And while I took art classes in high school, my Catholic school isn't what they show in the media. It was ghetto. Commodore 64s in 1998 ghetto. After Gr. 8, the teachers pretty much let me do whatever I wanted as long as I could relate it to their syllabus [3].
I didn't set out to have a particular style with writing probably because I wasn't aware of writing style; I just read stories. Kind of like how most people don't take apart the cinematography in Iron Man vs Dark Knight [4]. Now I know I love Neil Gaiman's style. His writing is both atmospheric & sarcastic if that makes any sense. I'm pretty sure you can look at excerpts-- unmarked, titleless-- & be able to pick out Gaiman's writing. It's the same with Julia Quinn, Robin McKinley & Joss Whedon. While I like JK Rowlings' stories, I'm not sure if she has a style that I can pick out; in fact, I think I like most writers for storytelling rather than style. And hey, fair enough, I'm there mostly for the story anyway.
This got me thinking about my style. I was joking around with lady_sarai that you know you're reading Katt's fics when there's constant transitions between present day & flashbacks. Whole chapters of "Elemental" & parts of "Prodigals." A bunch of my one-shots-- " Just a Little Green," " Extasie," " Etienne," " Lion-Headed Goddess" -- flip between time like a malfunctioning DeLorean. Heck, Call Back Yesterday was a giant excuse to time-travel. I don't recall setting out to do that. I have a sinking feeling time-flipping is due to laziness rather than style. If that's the case, I must stop ASAP. I really hate feeling as though I haven't progressed [5]. I like description far too much so I have run-on sentences or ten frillion similes. I'm addicted to semi-colons & the words that, also, so & and. I feel an intense need to tell the reader what the characters are doing while they're talking. My characters' eyes used to roll all over the place but now they just sigh. A lot.
Which brings me to art. I do distinctly remember, when I first thought of majoring in fine arts, wanting to be an illustrator who had A Distinctive Style. Not that I didn't love Jim Lee any more; my love for him will always be pure & true[6]. Half of what I know about drawing I got from him; the other half from real figure drawing in university[6]. My favourite artists these days still have Distinctive Styles: Francis Manapul, Skottie Young, _ming Doyle, Dean Trippe, Jody A Lee, Jay Anacleto & Karl Kerschl.
My frustration with my own art is that I feel I haven't really improved or grown. I know 90% of this is because I don't draw much any more & I DO want to work on that[8]. I'm disppointed in myself I guess.
Look, I drew this in 2002:
Compare with this in 2004-ish:
I don't abuse my smudge stick any more. I was all about realism in high school/early uni whereas now, I appreciate graphic, even geometrical, styles. But the figure drawing itself, IMHO, remains the same. There's also a bit more angularity to my lines[9]. Thing is, I don't know if that comes from my utter delight in Art Deco or because it's my short-cut when I can't remember exactly how cloth/knees/hair is supposed to lie. *LMAO*
You can really see that in these two images, both illustration work (work!) for 2 different authors.
This is 2006-ish:
This is 2009:
Again, 2006
And 2009
I think I might've actually gotten worse with the anatomy because I'm now more interested in dynamic movement & foreshortening everything.
There's a difference with my panels as well. Back in early 2K, I was all about the detail but the camera angles were quite simplistic.
There's every single strand of hair, embroidery on the girl's bodice, the very many skirt folds & the tree bark DEAR GOD THE TREE BARK. I can't even comprehend how I had the patience to do that. Right now, I try to think of ways NOT to draw wrinkles on clothes (It's not easy).
Now, I'm comfortable enough to put the camera everywhere but have gotten lazy with the details.
The thing is, I'd love, love, LOVE to combine the two. If I could just stop being lazy be comfortable with detailing again, I think I could really be the illustrator I started out to be when I was 11, drooling over Jim Lee's art. But to do that, I have to practice more. This is why I want to draw so much this year. I want my style to be dynamic camera + insane detail. I want intense blocks of black that can stand on its own, not really 3D shading but with crazy details & texture. I don't want it to be realistic like Jay Anacleto's stuff but not quite as cartoon/graphic as say Skottie Young or Colleen Coover (love all their work but that's their style, not mine) If when I learn to colour, that'll be the aspect that adds three-dimensionality.
What I want to know, dear flist, is what's your style? It can be writing, drawing or manips but what would make someone point to a story or image & go, "I can tell INSTANTLY that this is Such&Such's work." If you're not there yet, what do you want it to be & how will you go about doing this?
FOOTNOTES
[1]This is likely because I'm almost finished my nursing degree; I recall being thisclose to finishing my fine arts degree & being pre-occupied with anatomy & physiology of physical mutations as they exist in comic books.
[2] In hindsight, I really wish my high school teachers had been stricter about the lessons. I know they were all teaching to the average & while I was above average, I was by no means brilliant. I had plenty of room for improvement if they had just pushed me instead of letting me name my grade. Which was awesome on my transcript but, dammit, I could've really used some solid lessons on classical drawing & painting techniques that didn't come from library books.
[3] I had one teacher who let me name my grade in every art assignment. When I was in Gr. 11, the counsellor put me in Art 12 which I think was supposed to challenge me but after all those years of taking it easy, having older kids who kicked my butt in painting just made me resentful. My personality fault, not the counsellor's. They should've stuck me in the older classes since Gr. 9 to get me used to being challenged. Ah, well.
[4] I kind of wish I joined the Creative Writing Club though but I had a genius friend who wrote circles around me; I couldn't stand the competition. She was over Sylvia Plath when I was just discovering Tennyson. This friend also became a nurse long before I did. She's probably better at that than I am, too. Damn her. DAMN HER AND HER PRODIGIOUS BRAIN.
[5] However, what I hate the most is the feeling that I have something stuck in my back molars. There's this gap that never closed even after braces & retainers; it always catches food. Drives me nuts.
[6] Not in the stalker way. Honest.
[7] The models were all skinny former hippies instead of the Greek Pantheon I'd been led to believe existed in all figure drawing classes. One of them would, during the breaks, stand beside us STILL NAKED & comment on our work STILL NAKED. HIDE YOUR SCROTUM, MAN! IT IS WRINKLED & HAIRLESS!
[8] Then there's colouring. ARGH. I've had exactly 3 lessons in colour theory: 1 in Gr. 4 where I taught myself about the colour wheel from a book, 1 in Gr. 9 where my teacher slapped on A on a colour wheel that took 5 minutes to mix, & 1 in First Year Painting where, you guessed it, we did a colour wheel. I ROCK at the colour wheel. Give me any damn wheel & I will rainbow the crap out of it. No one has taught me what to do with that damn colour wheel once you've made it. Bob Ross barely counts. I glean information from different sites & artists who are nice enough to explain their process in books or blogs. When I colour, I feel like I'm 10 years old again, borrowing the 25 books on drawing from the library.
[9] Thank you, fateschewtoy for pointing that out.