why i want to get better at drawing
i've been on such an emotional high since mid-april that it's kinda scary.
1. need for speed
i mostly just need to get faster in order to tackle the 16 page comic i mentioned here. working on a few other comics and illustrations concurrently, i determined that it's a more effective use of my time to spend a few days properly relearning the basics of anatomy and drawing with a good workflow in mind rather than scrappily trying to construct bodies with references i don't understand (or otherwise going back to fix anatomy after— i don't have time for that)!
...i'm writing this as a break from working on one of my comics, though.
2. social media nihilism
a big frustration for me previously was social media likes (and lack thereof). i understand that it's just due to audience if anything (because one post that gets 50 likes on twitter might get 500+ on tumblr), but it was hard to not internalize that and see that as my skills being inferior. it even felt like damage to my character as a whole because i would see it as me being too heartless to connect with others through my artwork (i am insane). i dislike using hashtags on twitter as an aesthetic choice, so that would also piss me off to do so and then get 8 likes on a piece i spend 10+ hours on.
i still wanted to post my artwork i drew as prints for the convention though, so i decided to share it without caption or hashtags, and it ended up getting around 1.8k likes for fanart of a series i had never drawn before. granted 1) it is what i would legitimately consider my best illustration ever, really the first time i've combined my serious art style with proper backgrounds, and 2) it was fanart of a game whose audience overlapped heavily with the people who followed my old account.
however, it still proved to me that hastags and captions and whatnot do not matter on twitter. there's nothing you can do to make your art more seen by a particular audience so just give up on social media and enjoy drawing what you like.
3. get across the ditch
i'll do a full event report on tabling at overload later, but the gist of it is that although i printed 16 copies of a frieren print, not a single one sold. i don't believe the actual artwork was bad, and all of the pieces got picked up on the free trade table afterwards. but frieren is a terribly popular series and i don't have the skills to be able to compete against good artists when it comes to popular subjects, especially since there were a lot more australians this year.
therefore, i want to get better in order to sell on the australians' home turf in 2026! my goal is to be able to draw so well that i can table at smash con that year. apparently they had 1000 applicants this year though, so i don't know if i'd be able to make it... regardless, it definitely feels like a much more attainable goal than "do well on social media" or "get a job in art". i feel really good about wanting to get better for this...!
4. a niche only i can fill
when i think about it, there's no one in new zealand who knows artistic muscular anatomy in-depth. is it crazy for me to say this? i feel like it's true to some degree at least that in a noncompetitive island nation of 5 million people, the amount of people who know how to draw muscles really well is probably less than 100. art classes in high school don't teach technical skills at all, fine arts universities certainly don't, and there's no tertiary education dedicated to illustration aside from this one concept art course down south where you self-grade. basically, there's nowhere to formally learn muscular anatomy, is my understanding. well, we don't have a 2D industry of any kind here so there's no need to. maybe some 3D artists are more familiar with it.
i've always been so relaxed with my understanding of anatomy despite being an artist who prides myself on my semi-realism style. the reason for this is that i followed the words of jim lee, who stated that you don't really need to learn anatomy so intently because muscles look different in different movements anyway. i think this is still true and an important thing to keep in mind when drawing dynamic figures. but just from a few hours of studying anatomy properly— drawing out diagrams and labeling muscles and bone structure and all— i can understand my references so much better!
previously, i would be mindlessly copying references without having a grasp of the construction underneath. however, i now instead watch a short 10 minute anatomy video and copy down the pictures in order to understand where the muscles go and what they do. this lets me better interpret references and draw more accurately and quickly without them.
studying art so intently like this also feels very rewarding. while i think i still improved just through regular drawing, learning things like the names of muscles and bones is a much more quantitative approach to studying art. i can't tell that i've gotten better at illustration but i can tell that i know what a sternocleidomastoideus is and how it connects to the skull and clavicle. is it useful for 99% of artists to know the exact name of all of these parts? absolutely not, but it's a great way for me to learn. learning anatomy through copying youtube videos and taking notes also means i have a useful reference in my own sketchbook that i can use at any time.
it's really fun! improving my anatomy in just a few days has also improved my rendering and shading skills now that i actually now why light is going into a certain location. i feel like i can compete with my teenage self in terms of just making character faces look good.
5. a man always rock 'n' rolls
drawing sideM is very frustrating for me because i know that no one in english fandom gives a fuck about my favorite character and i've been lamenting that since 2016 (ok there was a short period where there was another english genbuP but umm. things happened). my posts also do not reach jp twitter at all, so it feels like there's no point in me drawing sideM when i could be putting my time into other stuff.
however, it seems that the only people who actively draw them at the moment have quite soft styles, which, while i think looks really good... i still want to see more bold and manly shinsoku as well! so it's just something i have to do myself. when i finally have the time again, i'll get better at lineart and coloring and draw more shinsoku again, even if jp fans don't interact with it. oi oi oi!