i'm gonna pretend that Savannah tagged me, yea.


HERE'S TO WRITING A LOT!


10]  i have just learned to paint in the last two years, if you can count that i tried watercolors for a week or two in high school. i first touched acrylics in Color Design Theory, first year of college. it was very apparent i had no clue how to paint and i hated it so much, everyone else was schooling me in the painting projects. not until my Media Exploration class in Second Year, did i even KNOW that there were different painting techniques, haahahaha damn. i learned a lot from one of the most seemingly stupid assignments, copying famous illustrator's paintings. honestly the most i learned was from copying a Gary Baseman painting. and now i love acrylic painting! before, most of my assignments were mostly watercolors since i seemed to be able to handle it alright, but they just aren't as solid and vibrant as i want them to be all the time. i've actually done some pretty big acrylic/mixed media paintings, and i keep seeing improvements myself, and it has made me want to take on painting comics, ideas are honestly brimming here, dudes. it bothers me a little that i still don't know a lot about painting (it cost me a job at an art store >8|), but i guess that means i have to just try and experiment and learn. i still have yet to try oil paints... but i don't know if i can deal with things that don't dry fast. also, i still cannot paint anything close to a straight line, and i doubt i will be able to anytime soon since i have shaky hands/no "artist-arm muscles" as my teacher said.

9] i pretty much worked with inking pens for a decade, and the random crayola marker or two. it was a progression from only drawing with thick black markers, to slowly, smaller inking pens, and then mechanical pencils. now i primarily draw in 0.3 mm mechanical drafting pencil, and refuse to ink at the moment, because usually my pencils are as small and detailed as i desire, and inking/erasing usually fucks that up good. but i still ink the odd time, though i prefer to go with the flow from that. with drawing with such a small lead, i've come to draw REALLY small, and drawing large does not compute, and they try to make you do that a lot in college. i can start drawing large, but halfway through the drawing, i'll start unconsciously drawing smaller and smaller, so by the end i'm like HAY... THIS IS REALLY OUT OF PROPORTION!?! all this could probably be avoided if i just drew small, and then photocopied it larger to transfer, but i can never be arsed to use the damn photocopier it seems.

8] i got asked to illustrate a German book about nightmares at the age of 14. i also had no clue how to do business and fucked that up good/it didn't go down. my dad kept telling me to ask for more money. haaaaaaaaaahahahahaha. all because i drew the sweet goth art ohyea.

7] i started drawing "anthro" art when i was small because of the motherfucking Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, and other cartoon animals on TV like Ren & Stimpy, Bonkers, and anything that was stupid cutesy. cheap watercolor (??) paintings of TMNT everywhere, i tells yuh. i draw anthro, and still do, because i loved cartoons and thats what anthro art is to me, cartoons. i never wanted to be an animal or was all "THIS IS MY SPIRIT" , it was more hay, i like that animal it is cool, i am going to draw it looking stupid and cartoony HURRAY! and that is pretty much how it still is today, Chair is just a dumb blob that possibly is a fox, and i draw her doing stupid pointless things usually. all my other characters are pretty much just that, characters, and they could go either way for me, any form, human or anthro, i just still enjoy drawing stupid animals.
i had no clue anyone else drew anthro art, honestly, until i found the internets and some girl on some dumb teen chat room showed me Hillary   && Lurid's art on VCL. i was like OH THAT IS NEAT. and then forgot about it until a friend made me join Elfwood (haha) and i randomly stumbled upon Poofy Wolf/Natalie Roble's art on there, then VCL again. and then i saw that there were a lot of people that did this, and then i saw that oh... oh my god there are a lot of people that draw scary ass furry art. i like cartoon animal art, if that is anthro art or whatever. fine. just not the people that shouldn't be allowed to use the internet's furry art

6] my main influences are:
- DC/Marvel etc. calibre comics. i used to lay around in my brother's room and read X-Men comics for hours and those made me want to draw and ad in extra details. just detailed inkings of Spawn's Todd McFarlane, Witchblade's Michael Turner, and The Amazing Spiderman's J. Scott Campbell are the shit. i'd like to think that that is the pokey detail in my "inkings" can be attributed/blamed to.
-Graffiti art, i love urban art and the spraypaint effect. mmm. color and funk please.
-graphic novels, as it's made me rethink comicking.
-cartoons! ridiculous, over-exaggerated, cartoons, Ren & Stimpy, anything that was over-the-top.
but also simple and delightful cartoon/comic styles, i love James Kochalka especially. also the art and colors of Mission hill are sick! simple and sweet i guess.
-Northwest Coastal Native Art, ahhhh! i loooove it, though i don't think it's apparent in any of my work here, but i've been experimenting lately with it and trying to come up with an urban blend of it. i would love to move further West, to Vancouver or the Island, once i'm done ACAD and immerse my self in the like.
-&& hip-hop goddamnit.

5] for a very long period of time when i was little, all i drew was a cat named Tiger, who was a black && white, early-animation styled character. i drew countless comics of adventures of Tiger and his 25789434675 friends. he wore pants and a nice vest. yea.
i blame the fact that i love early-animation pioneers and still do. i love watching old black & white animation 6789325246 more times than CG-animation of today.

4] besides comics, i wanted to be an animator for the longest time when i was little, i pretty much worshipped Saturday morning cartoons and got up at the crack of dawn to watch a good solid 8 hours of cartoons, before stupid WWF came on, on the three channels we got out on the farm i grew up on. i don't think i'll fall that way now with how impatient i am, unless its small animated/experimental shorts. my hopes and dreams of my own animated show are dashed, unless i happen upon a team of slaves etc etc to do this. anatomy is nice, but i really prefer cartoony stuff, that is just how i roll. super realistic-rendered art is just does not appeal to me and bores me usually, i like to see hints of stylization, a piece of the artist's personality or whathaveyou peeking out! i realize that having a good grasp on real anatomy helps with cartoony endeavours. i think i have a pretty good grasp on it, i just need to focus on a few more things like muscles of the arm and back. there is a fine line balance between cartoony and realistic anatomy, and sometimes i think it's hard to gather whether people WANT stylized anatomy, or they just cannot draw it and it turns out funky, i'm oddly picky about this. ain't that a b.

3] i am impatient. i don't draw pre-sketches. i don't like to do "roughs". i've practiced for so long, in drawing what i want RIGHT away, because i used to overrender things or mess them up when i went over them or tried to erase things, that it became that is was either done right the first time, or not at all (this resulted in many pieces of paper with one face on them being thrown away. i'd never drawn those anatomy general roughs (say a rough pose of a figure done in circles or whatever, i cannot think of the word damnit) until sometime in late highschool/early college? that didn't seem necessary to me/never really occured?
BUT i definitely see the use of them now, though i like to ignore the idea a lot still, old habits. the fact that profs wanted me to do pages and pages of concept sketches and roughs for projects just did not compute with me and. was very tough but i'm slowly finding ways of sketching/doing roughs that work for me. at first, i know it sounds stupid, i honestly did not know how to do roughs, because they way i was, i think of an idea, and just go with it right off the bat. CONSIDERING MY COMPOSITION ETC is slowly growing on me and i'm seeing it pays off in the end hahhaha wow. i am also glad that i'm actually considering color choice and schemes now, since i've fallen in love with a lot of illustrators simply because of their fantastic color sense.

2] i come from artistic roots, my mum is a good drawer and skilled ukrainian floral painter, but she doesn't paint anymore and i wish she did. she tried to give me her paints but i denied them. i remember watching her paint and load the brushes with SKILLZ, the way she painted still does not compute with my mind. i also have a few aunts on my dad's side who are professional and practicing artists in Canada and the Netherlands, one of my aunts curates a gallery in Holland. i also have cousins that are graphic designers, and a lot of the men from my dad's side etc, painted. my parents always had sketchpads for me and i died everytime i got new art supplies when i was small.

1] i think all i've ever really wanted to do is draw comics. i have hundreds of seriously embarassing comics that i've doodled about little adventures, ranging from comics about talking clouds, to personal daydream adventures. i need to put down some kind of rule/clause in writing/THE LAW, that if i die, and someone has to go through my stuff, that they be burned 8|. anyways, i'm finally pulling together my first real super-serious comic/graphic novel idea, and i want to see if i can paint the deal, thus it might not be that long or... it will just take me awhile?! it's about a tiger and a squirrel and parallels some personal happenings/thought. LIFE LESSONS WHUT!?




p.s. everyone should worship Dragon Ball style forever and the countless amazing art pieces that it has inspired.




i tag... YOU, you sly muthafuckah.